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Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.

Joseph Stiglitz

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Joseph Stiglitz
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 9
Critic
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
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Writer
Gary
Indiana
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz
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More quotes by Joseph Stiglitz

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As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.
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The problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion.
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For that to happen, growth has to be very strong. To get back to normalcy, we will have to have extended growth of more than 3 percent. That's not in the cards.
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If you're injured in an automobile accident, and you sue the driver, you get much more for your injury than if you're fighting for your country. There's a double standard here.
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What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working their problem is not low wages. The problem comes when they are not working.
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The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research, more on research on lifestyle drugs than on life saving drugs, and almost nothing on diseases that affect developing countries only. This is not surprising. Poor people cannot afford drugs, and drug companies make investments that yield the highest returns.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Anybody who has watched government from the inside recognizes that governments need institutions, need ways to respond to crises.
Joseph Stiglitz
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They [free market policies] were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Most people think the Iraq war has increased the probability of an attack. However, it's difficult to put this aspect into financial terms.
Joseph Stiglitz
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In the early 1990s, there was a debate among economists over shock therapy versus a gradualism strategy for Russia. The people in Russia who believed in shock therapy were Bolsheviks a few people at the top that rammed it down everybody's throat. They viewed the democratic process as a real impediment to reform.
Joseph Stiglitz
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GDP tells you nothing about sustainability
Joseph Stiglitz
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American inequality didn't just happen. It was created.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Negative effects on the economy were covered up with a flood of liquidity from the Fed. That,plus lax regulation, led to a housing bubble, a consumption boom - but we were living on borrowed money. It was inevitable that there would be a day of reckoning, and it has now come. We will be paying the costs with interest.
Joseph Stiglitz
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I think what they've been doing is largely almost in firefighting mode without a good conceptual framework - either at the micro or the macro level. Micro, you would ask: What kind of financial or banking system do we want? Macro, you would say: What are the underlying problems in the structure of our economy?
Joseph Stiglitz
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Health care is very different from other sectors of the economy in several respects, one of which is the fact that the risk can be very high beyond people's ability. That leads to insurance.
Joseph Stiglitz
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America has had to turn to foreigners to finance its debt - not surprising since household saving in the last years has plummeted to zero. China is one of the largest holders of American debt.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development MIT in my development as a professional economist.
Joseph Stiglitz