Profile

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University. He has been a Professor of Economics at Stanford, Princeton, Yale and All Souls College, Oxford. Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information and his role in creating a new branch of economics, “the economics of information.” His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets to do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance. Stiglitz has held numerous posts advising governments. He has been Chairman of US President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank, Chairman of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, and, in 2008, was appointed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to chair a Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Economic Progress. In July 2000, he founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University to stimulate a heterodox policy dialogue on major issues in international development. His book Globalization and Its Discontents has been translated into languages and has sold more than one million copies worldwide. His most recent book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, was published in 2010.