Nobel laureate for work on asymmetric information, former World Bank chief economist and critic of IMF prescriptions
Born into a Jewish family in Gary, Indiana, Stiglitz studied at Amherst College and MIT. He shared the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for the theory of markets with asymmetric information. He served on the Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton in 1993–97, as member and then chairman, and in 1997–2000 was senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, which he left after expressing dissent with its policies. In Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) he criticised the IMF. A professor at Columbia University since 2001, he chaired the United Nations commission on reforming the international monetary and financial system in 2009. He calls laissez-faire economists "free-market fundamentalists".
Also known as: Joseph Eugene Stiglitz
Activities and affiliations
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1966–
Scholarship and theory
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1993–1997
United States state institutionsMember and Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
Economy, finance and planning
Career Timeline
- 1993–1995Member of the Council of Economic Advisers
- 1995.06.28–1997Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
- 1997–2000Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank
- 2001Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
- 2002Published Globalization and Its Discontents
Related historical events
- 1982.08.12–1990The Third World debt crisis and structural adjustmentFormer Chief Economist of the World BankArgued that the IMF, designed to fund Keynesian reflation, lost its reason for being when it turned monetarist, and reflected the interests and ideology of Western finance.
- 1997.07.02–1998.09.23The Asian financial crisis and South Korea's IMF crisisChief Economist of the World BankLikened the crisis to a bank run and in Globalization and Its Discontents criticised the IMF for pushing premature capital-market liberalisation and imposing austerity and high interest rates afterwards.
- 2007.08.09–2009.06The 2008 Global Financial CrisisEconomistArgued that the repeal of Glass–Steagall let the investment-bank culture take over commercial banking.