John Roemer

John Roemer is the Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Stout Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Economics at Yale University. He earned an A.B. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974. Prior to joining the Yale faculty in 2000, Roemer spent many years at the University of California, Davis. As a Ph.D. student at Berkeley, he taught mathematics for five years in San Francisco secondary schools while involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement.

Roemer's research focuses on political economy and distributive justice, utilizing rigorous analytical models across economics, political science, and philosophy. His work addresses exploitation and class in Marxist theory, equality of opportunity, political competition, racism and xenophobia, inter-generational equity in climate change, and the micro-foundations of cooperation. He introduced Kantian optimization and Kantian equilibrium as alternatives to Nash equilibrium, applying them to scenarios such as childhood vaccination, market socialism, and environmental policy, often yielding superior outcomes. Roemer has authored numerous influential books, including How We Cooperate: A Theory of Kantian Optimization (Yale University Press, 2019), Sustainability for a Warming Planet (2015, with H. Llavador and J. Silvestre), Democracy, Education, and Equality (2006), Political Competition: Theory and Applications (Harvard University Press, 2001), Equality of Opportunity (Harvard University Press, 1998), Theories of Distributive Justice (Harvard University Press, 1996), and A Future for Socialism (1994). Selected recent publications include "What is socialism today? Conceptions of a cooperative economy" (International Economic Review, 2021), "A game theoretic analysis of childhood vaccination: Kant versus Nash" (2022), and "Socialism revised" (Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2017). He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, Guggenheim Foundation, and Russell Sage Foundation, as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Corresponding Member of the British Academy. Roemer's contributions have profoundly shaped debates in distributive justice, cooperation theory, and political economy.

Professional Email: john.roemer@yale.edu