William R. Cline has been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 1981. During 1996–2001 while on leave from the Institute, Dr. Cline was deputy managing director and chief economist of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) in Washington, DC. From 2002 through 2011 he held a joint appointment with the Peterson Institute and the Center for Global Development, where he is currently senior fellow emeritus. Before joining the Peterson Institute, he was senior fellow, the Brookings Institution (1973–81); deputy director of development and trade research, office of the assistant secretary for international affairs, US Treasury Department (1971–73); Ford Foundation visiting professor in Brazil (1970–71); and lecturer and assistant professor of economics at Princeton University (1967–70). He graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1963, and received his MA (1964) and PhD (1969) in economics from Yale University.

His publications include:

Economic Consequences of a Land Reform in Brazil, 1970

Potential Effects of Income Redistribution on Economic Growth: Latin American Cases, 1972

International Monetary Reform and the Developing Countries, 1976

Trade Negotiations in the Tokyo Round: A Quantitative Assessment, 1978, coauthor

Economic Integration in Central America, 1978, coauthor

Agrarian Structure and Productivity in Developing Countries, 1979, coauthor

Policy Alternatives for a New International Economic Order: An Economic Analysis, 1979, editor

Economic Stabilization in Developing Countries, 1981, editor

World Inflation and the Developing Countries, 1981, principal author

Trade Policy in the 1980s, 1983, editor

International Debt: Systemic Risk and Policy Response, 1984

Exports of Manufactures from Developing Countries, 1984

The US-Japan Economic Problem, 1985, coauthor

Mobilizing Bank Lending to Debtor Countries, 1987

The Future of World Trade in Textiles and Apparel, 1987

United States External Adjustment and the World Economy, 1989

The Economics of Global Warming, 1992

International Economic Policy in the 1990s, 1994

International Debt Reexamined, 1995

Predicting External Imbalances for the United States and Japan, 1995

Trade and Income Distribution, 1997

Trade Policy and Global Poverty, 2004

The United States as a Debtor Nation, 2005

Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country, 2007

Financial Globalization, Economic Growth, and the Crisis of 2007-09, 2010

Carbon Abatement Costs and Climate Change Finance, 2011

Resolving the European Debt Crisis, 2012