Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a Professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. A recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), he is a former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank and a former member and chairman of the (US president’s) Council of Economic Advisers. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 2001 and received that university’s highest academic rank (university professor) in 2003.

In 2011 Stiglitz was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Known for his pioneering work on asymmetric information, Stiglitz’s work focuses on income distribution, risk, corporate governance, public policy, macroeconomics and globalization. He is the author of numerous books, and several bestsellers. His most recent titles are ‘People, Power, and Profits, Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy’, ‘Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited’, ‘The Euro and Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy’. 

More about Joseph Stiglitz and the 2001 Prize in Economic Sciences 

Photo credit: Courtesy of Daniel Baud and the Sydney Opera House