Lawrence H. Goulder is the Shuzo Nishihara Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Center for Environmental and Energy Policy Analysis. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Precourt Institute for the Environment, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a University Fellow of Resources for the Future.

Goulder graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in philosophy in 1973. He obtained a master's degree in musical composition from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris in 1975 and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford in 1982. He was a faculty member in the Department of Economics at Harvard before returning to Stanford's economics department in 1989.

Goulder's research covers a range of environmental issues, including green tax reform, the design of environmental tax systems and emissions trading policies, climate change policy, and comprehensive wealth measurement ("green" accounting). He has served on several advisory committees to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board and the California Air Resources Board, and as co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.

His work often employs a general equilibrium framework that integrates the economy and the environment and links the activities of government, industry, and households. The research considers both the aggregate benefits and costs of various policies as well as the distribution of policy impacts across industries, income groups, and generations. Some of his work involves collaborations with climatologists and biologists.

At Stanford Goulder teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental economics and policy, and co-organizes weekly seminars in public and environmental economics.