84 Facts About Joseph Stiglitz

1.

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University.

2.

Joseph Stiglitz is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the John Bates Clark Medal.

3.

Joseph Stiglitz is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank.

4.

Joseph Stiglitz is a former member and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

5.

Joseph Stiglitz is known for his support for the Georgist public finance theory and for his critical view of the management of globalization, of laissez-faire economists, and of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

6.

In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University.

7.

Joseph Stiglitz has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 2001, and received the university's highest academic rank in 2003.

8.

Joseph Stiglitz was the founding chair of the university's Committee on Global Thought.

9.

Joseph Stiglitz was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

10.

Joseph Stiglitz served as the chair of the international Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, appointed by the French President Sarkozy, which issued its report in 2010, Mismeasuring our Lives: Why GDP doesn't add up, and currently serves as co-chair of its successor, the High Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress.

11.

From 2011 to 2014, Joseph Stiglitz was the president of the International Economic Association.

12.

Joseph Stiglitz presided over the organization of the IEA triennial world congress held near the Dead Sea in Jordan in June 2014.

13.

Joseph Stiglitz has received more than 40 honorary degrees, including degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, and he has been decorated by several governments including Bolivia, South Korea, Colombia, Ecuador, and most recently France, where he was appointed as a member of the Legion of Honor, Officer.

14.

In 2011, Joseph Stiglitz was named as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by the Time magazine.

15.

Joseph Stiglitz's work focuses on income distribution from a Georgist perspective, asset risk management, corporate governance, and international trade.

16.

Joseph Stiglitz is the author of several books, the latest being People, Power, and Profits, The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity, and Creating a Learning Society: A New Approach to Growth Development and Social Progress.

17.

Joseph Stiglitz is one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.

18.

Joseph Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana into a Jewish family.

19.

Joseph Stiglitz's mother was Charlotte, a schoolteacher, and his father was Nathaniel David Stiglitz, an insurance salesman.

20.

Joseph Stiglitz attended Amherst College, where he was a National Merit Scholar, active on the debate team, and president of the student government.

21.

Joseph Stiglitz studied for his PhD from MIT from 1966 to 1967, during which time he held an MIT assistant professorship.

22.

Joseph Stiglitz initially arrived at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge as a Fulbright Scholar in 1965, and he later won a Tapp Junior Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge which was instrumental in shaping his understanding of Keynes and macroeconomic theory.

23.

Since 2001, Stiglitz has been a professor at Columbia University, with appointments at the Business School, the Department of Economics and the School of International and Public Affairs, and is an editor of The Economists' Voice journal with J Bradford DeLong and Aaron Edlin.

24.

Joseph Stiglitz takes classes for a double-degree program between Sciences Po Paris and Ecole Polytechnique in 'Economics and Public Policy'.

25.

Joseph Stiglitz has chaired The Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester since 2005.

26.

Joseph Stiglitz is widely considered a New-Keynesian economist, although at least one economics journalist says his work cannot be so clearly categorised.

27.

Joseph Stiglitz has played a number of policy roles throughout his career.

28.

Joseph Stiglitz served in the Clinton administration as the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

29.

Joseph Stiglitz was fired by the World Bank for expressing dissent with its policies.

30.

Joseph Stiglitz has advised American president Barack Obama, but has criticized the Obama Administration's financial-industry rescue plan.

31.

On July 25,2011, Joseph Stiglitz participated in the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid, expressing his support to the 15M Movement protestors.

32.

Joseph Stiglitz was the president of the International Economic Association from 2011 to 2014.

33.

On September 27,2015, the United Kingdom Labour Party announced that Joseph Stiglitz was to sit on its Economic Advisory Committee along with five other world-leading economists.

34.

Joseph Stiglitz made early contributions to a theory of public finance stating that an optimal supply of local public goods can be funded entirely through capture of the land rents generated by those goods.

35.

Joseph Stiglitz dubbed this the 'Henry George theorem' in reference to the radical classical economist Henry George who famously advocated for land value tax.

36.

The explanation behind Joseph Stiglitz's finding is that rivalry for public goods takes place geographically, so competition for access to any beneficial public good will increase land values by at least as much as its outlay cost.

37.

Joseph Stiglitz, together with Avinash Dixit, created a tractable model of monopolistic competition that was an alternative to traditional perfect-competition models of general equilibrium.

38.

The effect of Joseph Stiglitz's influence is to make economics even more presumptively interventionist than Samuelson preferred.

39.

Objections to the adoption of positions suggested by Joseph Stiglitz's do not come from economics itself, but mostly from political scientists, especially in the field of sociology.

40.

Joseph Stiglitz became deeply involved in environmental issues, which included serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and helping draft a new law for toxic wastes.

41.

When President Bill Clinton was re-elected, he asked Joseph Stiglitz to continue to serve as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for another term.

42.

Joseph Stiglitz always had a poor relationship with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

43.

Joseph Stiglitz resigned from the World Bank in January 2000, a month before his term expired.

44.

Meanwhile, the Bank's External Affairs department told the press that Joseph Stiglitz had not been fired, his post had merely been abolished.

45.

In July 2000, Joseph Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, with the support of the Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur, and Mott Foundations and the Canadian and Swedish governments, to enhance democratic processes for decision-making in developing countries and to ensure that a broader range of alternatives are on the table and more stakeholders are at the table.

46.

At the beginning of 2008, Joseph Stiglitz chaired the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, known as the Joseph Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission, initiated by President Sarkozy of France.

47.

In 2009, Joseph Stiglitz chaired the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System which was convened by the President of the United Nations General Assembly "to review the workings of the global financial system, including major bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF, and to suggest steps to be taken by Member States to secure a more sustainable and just global economic order".

48.

In 2010, Joseph Stiglitz acted as an advisor to the Greek government during the Greek debt crisis.

49.

Joseph Stiglitz appeared on Bloomberg TV for an interview on the risks of Greece defaulting, in which he stated that he was very confident that Greece would not default.

50.

The next day, during a BBC interview, Joseph Stiglitz stated that "there's no problem of Greece or Spain meeting their interest payments".

51.

Joseph Stiglitz argued nonetheless, that it would be desirable and needed for all of Europe to make a clear statement of belief in social solidarity and that they "stand behind Greece".

52.

In 2012, Joseph Stiglitz described the European austerity plans as a "suicide-pact".

53.

Joseph Stiglitz argued that Greek debt should be written off.

54.

Since March 2012, Joseph Stiglitz has been a member of the Scottish Government's Fiscal Commission Working Group, which oversees the work to establish a fiscal and macroeconomic framework for an independent Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Council of Economic Advisers.

55.

Together with Professors Andrew Hughes Hallett, Sir James Mirrlees and Frances Ruane, Joseph Stiglitz will "advise on the establishment of a credible Fiscal Commission which entrenches financial responsibility and ensures market confidence".

56.

In July 2015, Joseph Stiglitz endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.

57.

For Joseph Stiglitz, there is no such thing as an invisible hand, in the sense that free markets lead to efficiency as if guided by unseen forces.

58.

On July 25,2011, Joseph Stiglitz participated in the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid expressing his support for the anti-austerity movement in Spain.

59.

Joseph Stiglitz encouraged those present to respond to the bad ideas, not with indifference, but with good ideas.

60.

Joseph Stiglitz opposed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership trade deal between the European Union and the United States, and has argued that the United Kingdom should consider its withdrawal from the EU in the 2016 referendum on the matter if TTIP passes, saying that "the strictures imposed by TTIP would be sufficiently averse to the functioning of government that it would make me think over again about whether membership of the EU was a good idea".

61.

Joseph Stiglitz argues that land value tax would improve the efficiency and equity of agricultural economies.

62.

Joseph Stiglitz believes that societies should rely on a generalized Henry George principle to finance public goods, protect natural resources, improve land use, and reduce the burden of rents and taxes on the poor while increasing productive capital formation.

63.

Joseph Stiglitz thinks that surplus countries are getting richer at the expense of deficit countries.

64.

Joseph Stiglitz thinks that the rest of the world should impose a carbon-adjustment tax on American exports that do not comply with global standard.

65.

Joseph Stiglitz denounces the "trickle-down" policies of liberalism and neoliberalism However, he calls for lowering trade barriers and promoting free trade.

66.

Joseph Stiglitz advises China to take sanctions against the United States.

67.

Joseph Stiglitz has called for a transition to a green economy.

68.

Joseph Stiglitz said a wealth taxes on fortunes acquired during many generations would have a larger influence.

69.

Joseph Stiglitz maintains most billionaires acquired much of their wealth through luck.

70.

Joseph Stiglitz identifies problems arising from its assumptions concerning completeness.

71.

In Globalization and Its Discontents, Joseph Stiglitz argues that what are often called "developing economies" are, in fact, not developing at all, and puts much of the blame on the IMF.

72.

Joseph Stiglitz argues that when families and firms seek to buy too little compared to what the economy can produce, governments can fight recessions and depressions by using expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to spur the demand for goods and services.

73.

Joseph Stiglitz argues that the IMF has done great damage through the economic policies it has prescribed that countries must follow in order to qualify for IMF loans, or for loans from banks and other private-sector lenders that look to the IMF to indicate whether a borrower is creditworthy.

74.

Joseph Stiglitz seeks to show that these policies have been disastrous for the countries that have followed them.

75.

Dr Joseph Stiglitz argues that through tariffs, subsidies, an over-complex patent system and pollution, the world is being both economically and politically destabilised.

76.

Joseph Stiglitz argues that strong, transparent institutions are needed to address these problems.

77.

Joseph Stiglitz is an exception to the general pro-globalisation view of professional economists, according to economist Martin Wolf.

78.

Joseph Stiglitz argues that economic opportunities are not widely enough available, that financial crises are too costly and too frequent, and that the rich countries have done too little to address these problems.

79.

Joseph Stiglitz identifies the true sources of wealth and of increases in standards of living, based on learning, advances in science and technology, and the rule of law.

80.

Joseph Stiglitz was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1983, the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, and the American Philosophical Society in 1997.

81.

Joseph Stiglitz received the 2010 Gerald Loeb Awards for Commentary for "Capitalist Fools and Wall Street's Toxic Message".

82.

Joseph Stiglitz was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2009.

83.

Joseph Stiglitz married Jane Hannaway in 1978 but the couple later divorced.

84.

Joseph Stiglitz married for the third time on October 28,2004 to Anya Schiffrin, who works at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.