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One has to always ask the question: Where can one be most effective in helping shape policies? It is always difficult when you're inside because you're very constrained.

Joseph Stiglitz

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Joseph Stiglitz
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 9
Critic
Economist
Non-Fiction Writer
Professor
Science Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Gary
Indiana
Joseph Eugene Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz
Asks
Constrained
Difficult
Policies
Helping
Effective
Always
Shape
Shapes
Inside
Policy
Question

More quotes by Joseph Stiglitz

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Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them.
Joseph Stiglitz
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I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.
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Climate change is a reality.
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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I went to Amherst because my brother had gone there before me, and he went there because his guidance counselor thought that we would do better there than at a large university like Harvard.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The momentum today behind the idea of a new global reserve currency reflects, in effect, the rise of the rest in world politics and economics, led by China.
Joseph Stiglitz
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You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren't here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.
Joseph Stiglitz
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No one would look just at a firm's revenues to assess how well it was doing. Far more relevant is the balance sheet, which shows assets and liability. That is also true for a country.
Joseph Stiglitz
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My teachers helped guide and motivate me but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.
Joseph Stiglitz
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You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate.
Joseph Stiglitz
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Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The only surprise about the economic crisis of 2008 was that it came as a surprise to so many.
Joseph Stiglitz
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For 60 years, since World War II, we have been trying to create a rules-based system, a global economic system. We understand that what makes our economy function is what we call the rule of law, and what is true domestically is also true internationally. It is important to have rules by which we govern our relations with other countries.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The problem with NAFTA was with what we wanted. And there, the agenda had been set by our corporations. So what is true is that workers in the United States and workers in the developing countries were often disadvantaged. They were worse off. The big winners were our corporations.
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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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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The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The roots of the crisis in East Asia were in private sector decisions. The biggest problems were the misallocation of investment, most notably to speculative real estate, and risky financing, especially borrowing short-term debt on international markets.
Joseph Stiglitz
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The problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion.
Joseph Stiglitz