The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Basel founded in 1460 hereby confers all the dignity, rights and privileges of an honorary doctorate in economics upon Professor Thomas F. Rutherford from the United States of America

for his major scientific contributions in the fields of international trade, energy markets and environmental economics;

for developing the “Mathematical Programming System for General Equilibrium” (MPSGE), which greatly facilitated and disseminated the use of Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models;

for his major theoretical contributions to and innovative applications of CGE models, which laid the foundation for improved economic policy analyses – an accomplishment highly valued by our faculty in its pursuit of evidence-based policy-making.

Professor Rutherford is a 1973 graduate of Madison East High School. He attended college at Yale where he majored in Engineering and Applied Science. Professor Thomas F. Rutherford earned a PhD in Operations Research from Stanford University in 1987 under the direction of Alan S. Manne. He has subsequently been a faculty member at the University of Western Ontario, the University of Colorado, and the ETH Zurich before joining the University of Wisconsin in 2012.

Rutherford's interest in economics began when he was a Peace Corps volunteer involved in the survey, design and construction of mule trail suspension bridges in Lamjung, Nepal from 1977 to 1979. As an employee of the Local Development Department Rutherford designed and supervised construction of bridges at Syange and Ngadi Khola, bridges which were instrumental to opening of the Annapurna Circuit trekking route. Prior to construction of the bridges, the trail from the roadhead at Dumre to Manang was roughly 200 kilometers and all the goods going up the trail were carried by porters. When Rutherford returned to visit the bridge sites In 1981, all transport was conducted by mules and the price of rice in Manang had fallen by a factor of three. Rutherford's interest in general equilibrium modeling was motivated by this experience.

Professor Rutherford's research focuses on the formulation, solution and application of numerical equilibrium models for economic issues in environmental economics, international trade and economic growth. His work has focused on the economic analysis of global warming, the economic consequences of multi-regional trade agreements, the economic effects of trade reform in small open economies. His research has also included methodological contributions related to the application of complementarity models in economics.