NOBEL PRIZE WINNER JOSEPH STIGLITZ

‘[Joseph] Stiglitz’s emergence as a prominent critic of the current economic order was no surprise. His original Ph.D. thesis was on inequality. And his entire career in academia has been devoted to showing how markets cannot always be counted on to produce ideal results. In a series of enormously important papers, for which he would eventually win the Nobel Prize, Stiglitz showed how imperfections and asymmetries of information regularly lead markets to results that do not maximize welfare. He also argued that this meant, at least in theory, that well-placed government interventions could help correct these market failures. Stiglitz’s work in this field has continued: he has just written (with Bruce Greenwald) Creating a Learning Society, a dense academic work on how government policy can help drive innovation in the age of the knowledge economy.”

James Surowiecki, “Why the Rich Are So Much Richer,” in the New York Review, September 24, 2015, pp: 32-36.