Joseph Stiglitz

I have written repeatedly about the problems of globalization: an unfair global trade regime that impedes development; an unstable global financial system that results in recurrent crises, with poor countries repeatedly finding themselves burdened with unsustainable debt; and a global intellectual...

The United Nations’ sixtieth anniversary summit in September reflected its strengths and importance in the many areas in which the international community must work together. Unfortunately, the summit also exposed the UN’s weaknesses and limitations. Founded at the end of World War II to...

With President Bush at the table, the “spin masters” who put a victorious gloss on all his actions had little need to lower expectations concerning the outcome of the G-8 meeting in Scotland. Any agreement would be seen as a major achievement. The write-off of multilateral debt for the world’s...

America’s imposition of tariffs on imported steel has been greeted by a howl of protest around the world. But harsh words have not been followed by a strong counter-attack. Now is the time to confront America’s hypocrisy, not to bluster. The global financial crisis of 1997/1998 — mismanaged by...

This year’s Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences went to George Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley, Michael Spence of Stanford University, and myself for our work on the “asymmetry of information.” What is that work about and why did we undertake it? For two hundred years,...

It’s official: the world is in a global slowdown: maybe not a recession, but certainly a slowdown. Growth in 2001 is expected to be half of last year’s. Japan seems headed for a real recession, and Europe’s bragging that its strong fundamentals will allow it to weather the American slowdown with...

Stanley Fischer’s departure as First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF provided an ideal opportunity to re-examine the fund’s Washington Consensus ideology of privatization, liberalization (especially trade liberalization), and macro-stabilization. That ideology reigned supreme throughout Mr....

At a Washington briefing IMF Director for External Affairs Thomas Douglas announced that in the next few days the fund’s board will approve Ann Krueger as first deputy executive director. She is scheduled to officially begin work in her new post in the early fall and will be the first woman to hold...