Willi Semmler is Henry Arnhold Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, New York, and was Professor at American University, Washington D.C. and Bielefeld University. He was a visiting professor at Columbia University, Stanford University, the CEPREMA Paris, at La Sapienza, Rome, and Fulbright Professor at the University of Economics, Vienna. He is also Senior Researcher at the IIASA, Vienna. His areas of expertise includes empirical macroeconomics, financial economics, and economics of climate change. His research has appeared in working papers of the World Bank, the IMF, the ILO, and the ECB.

He has authored and co-authored several books including: Dynamic Macroeconomics (MIT, 1997), Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions (Springer, 2011), and Global Environment, Natural Resources and Economic Growth (Oxford, 2008). His recent co-edited Oxford Handbook of the Macroeconomics of Global Warming (Oxford University Press, 2015) focuses on the macroeconomics of global warming. Professor Semmler is now concentrating on the issue of financing climate policies.