Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, ForMemRS, FBA, is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciencesand the John Bates Clark Medal. He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and is a former member and chairman of theCouncil of Economic Advisers. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, laissez-faire economists, and some international institutions like the International Monetary...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth9 February 1943
CountryUnited States of America
The recovery of the banks is what happens when you reduce competition, lend money to them at zero interest rates, allow them to gamble. That particular style of restoration actually inhibits the economic recovery.
There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history-a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it's crucial to get the history straight.
The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.
Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.
I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.
There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.
Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education.
I went to Amherst because my brother had gone there before me, and he went there because his guidance counselor thought that we would do better there than at a large university like Harvard.
The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.
GDP tells you nothing about sustainability
Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation.
In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue - it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.
Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.
The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.