Joseph E. Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana in 1943. A graduate of Amherst College, he received his PHD from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970, and in 1979 was awarded the John Bates Clark Award, given biennially by the American Economic Association to the economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the field. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, MIT and was the Drummond Professor and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is now University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and Executive Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000. In 2008 he was asked by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to chair the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which released its final report in September 2009. In 2009 he was appointed by the President of the United Nations General Assembly as chair of the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System, which also released its report in September 2009.

Stiglitz holds a part-time appointment at the University of Manchester as Chair of the Management Board and Director of Graduate Summer Programs at the Brooks World Poverty Institute. He serves on numerous other boards, including Amherst College's Board of Trustees and Resources for the Future.

Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, which have now become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts. He has made major contributions to macro-economics and monetary theory, to development economics and trade theory, to public and corporate finance, to the theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and to the theories of welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D.

His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance.

Recognized around the world as a leading economic educator, he has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He founded one of the leading economics journals, The Journal of Economic Perspectives. His book Globalization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton June 2001) has been translated into 35 languages, besides at least two pirated editions, and in the non-pirated editions has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Other recent books include The Roaring Nineties (W.W. Norton); Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics (Cambridge University Press) with Bruce Greenwald; Fair Trade for All (Oxford University Press), with Andrew Charlton; Making Globalization Work, (W.W. Norton and Penguin/ Allen Lane, 2006); and The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, (W.W. Norton and Penguin/ Allen Lane, 2008), with Linda Bilmes of Harvard University. His newest book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, was published in January 2010 by WW Norton and Penguin/ Allen Lane.

Globalization

• Risk and Global Economic Architecture: Why Full Financial Integration May Be Undesirable,American Economic Asociation Annual Meeting, Atlanta, January 2010.
• Making Globalization Work: Global Financial Markets in an Era of Turbulence,Institutional Money Congress, Frankfurt, February 19, 2008.
• Making Globalization Work for Developing Countries, Sir Winston Scott Memorial Lecture, Central Bank of Barbados, November 2007.
• Globalization and Development, presented at the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, July 2007.
• Trade, Globalization, and Development, presented at the Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, April 2007.
• Making Globalization Work: Implications for Investors, UBS Conference, London, April 19, 2007.

Managing Crises

• The Economic Crisis: Towards a New World Order? Towards Sustainable Growth?, Mumbai, May 26, 2010.
• Restoring Stability and Confidence in European Sovereign Debt Markets, London, May 18, 2010.
• The Fall: A Chronicle of the Financial Crisis, Orlando, May 17, 2010
• The Economic Crisis: Towards a New World Order? Towards Sustainable Growth?, Hong Kong, April 29, 2010
• An Agenda for Reforming Economic Theory, Institute for New Economic Thinking Conference, Cambridge, April 10, 2010.
• World Economic Crisis: Lessons and Consequences, Tunis, January 2010.
• Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, Seoul, Korea, October 27, 2009.
• Keys to Future Stability and Growth: Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis, Shanghai, May 13, 2009.
• Crisis and Recovery: Lessons from Argentina's Experience, Buenos Aires, 2005.
• Finance and the East Asia Crisis, Money, Macro, and Finance Millennium Conference, September 2000.
• Lessons from the Financial Crisis in Asia, University of Macau, March 2002.

Development and Aid

• Socially Responsible Investment, Public Lecture at the Ministry of Finance, Oslo, Norway, August 2008.
• International Justice and Aid: Do We Need Some Scheme of Redistribution of Income at the World Level? Remarks at the XIII plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, The Vatican, April 2007.
• An Agenda of North-South Cooperation, keynote address at the Seminar on Economic Development and Social Equity, IBSA Dialogue, Rio de Janeiro, August 2005.
• Democracy and Economic Development, Quito, Ecuador, July 2006.

Finance

• Keys to Future Stability and Growth: Institutional Investors and Regulation, Pioneer Conference, Beijing, May 12, 2009.
• Making Globalization Work: Global Financial Markets in an Era of Turbulence, Frankfurt, February 2008.
• Towards a Reform of the Global Reserve System, Money and Banking Conference of the Banco Central de la Republica Argentina, Buenos Aires, June 2007.
• Reforming the Global Reserve System, Bank of Italy, Rome, April 2007.

The Environment and Natural Resources

• Sharing the Burden of Saving the Planet: Global Social Justice for Sustainable Development, Keynote speech at the June 2008 meeting of the International Economic Association, Istanbul.
• Creating Sustainable Business Districts, Paris, February 15, 2008.
• The Global Economics and Politics of Climate Change, Jakarta, August 2007.
• Leadership in the Struggle for Environmental Sustainability and Conservation, Brussels, December 1, 2006

Trade

• Fair Trade for All: How Trade can Promote Development, April 2006.
• The Doha Round of Trade Negotiations: An Agenda to Promote Development and Facilitiate Adjustment, Hong Kong, December 2005.
• Development Round in Perspective, Annnual Bank Conference on Development Economics, Brussels, May 2004.

International Economic Institutions

• The Post Washington Consensus Consensus, Sao Paolo, August 22, 2005.
• Reduction and Simplification of Conditionalities in Line with the Monterrey Spirit, MEFMI Ministers' Forum, Brunei, Darussalam, September 15, 2003.
• Fairness and the Washington Consensus, Century Foundation, April 7, 2000.

Specific Countries/Regions

• Post-Financial Crisis: Options for Africa, African Development Bank, Eminent Speakers Series Lecture, Tunis, January 2010.
• Towards a More Productive Agrarian Economy for Myanmar, UNESCAP Development Partnership conference, Naypyitaw, Myanmar, December 2009.
• Employment, Security, and Development: Challenges for Colombia, Carlos Lleras Restrepo Foundation, Bogota, Colombia, November 20, 2009.
• China's Policy Response to the Global Financial Crisis, China Development Forum, Beijing, March 2009.
• China and the Global Financial Crisis, Beijing, March 2009.
• Towards a More Sustainable Growth Strategy for China, China Development Forum, Beijing, March, 2008.
• The True Cost of the War in Iraq: Implications for the Global Economy, address at Chatham House, London, February 26, 2008.

Economics and Economic Theory

• Economics Trapped in an Old Paradigm, Institute for New Economic Thinking, April 5, 2010.
• The Silver Lining of a New Economic Beginning, Institute for New Economic Thinking, March 31, 2010.
• Homoeconomicus: The Impact of the Economic Crisis on Economic Theory,American Economic Asociation Annual Meeting, Opening Plenary Keynote Address, Atlanta, January 2010.
• Economic Theory and the Current Economic Crisis, Foundation Lecture, University of Manchester, October 2008.
• Economic Theory and the Current Economic Crisis, 3rd Annual Meeting of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, Lindau, August 2008.
• Development of Economics Education: Retrospect and Prospect, Beijing, March 2006.
• Information and Political Processes, American Political Science Association, Chicago, September 3, 2004.
• Has the New Millennium Repealed the Old Economic Laws? Columbus, Ohio, October 7, 2004.
• Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics, Nobel Lecture, May 15, 2002

Public Policy

• Economic Foundations of Intellectual Property Rights: Towards an Agenda for the New Administration, Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue Workshop, Washington, DC, January 2009.
• Uncertainties in the Life Cycle and How They Should be Addressed, Pioneer European Colloquium, Vienna, November 2007.
• Innovation and Competition in the Digital Economy, Paris, October 2007.
• Quality Employment: Challenges for the Future, Bilbao, April 2007.
• Social Policies in a Market Economy, Beijing, March 2006.