Joseph Stiglitz

Columbia University

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American economist at Columbia University and one of the most cited economists in the world, awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with George Akerlof and Michael Spence for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information. Stiglitz made foundational contributions to the theory of screening and signaling in labor and insurance markets, to efficiency wages, and to the theory of taxation under imperfect information. His work demonstrated pervasive ways in which real markets deviate from competitive efficiency, with profound implications for regulatory policy, financial regulation, and antitrust. As Chief Economist of the World Bank, he advocated for approaches to development that addressed market failures and the needs of developing countries, and became an influential critic of Washington Consensus prescriptions. His subsequent work has addressed inequality, the economics of the information economy, globalization, and the political economy of macroeconomic policy, making him one of the most publicly engaged economists of his generation.