Joseph E. Stiglitz (born February 9, 1943)
斯蒂格利茨教授是当今世界上最负盛名的经济学家，美国哥伦比亚大学经济学教授。他1943年生于美国印第安纳州，1960年考入美国东部著名大学---阿赫斯特学院（Amherst College）,毕业后在美国麻省理工学院（MIT）进修经济学，师从保罗·萨缪尔森，获美国麻省理工学院博士学位，年仅26岁即为耶鲁大学经济学教授，此后他先后执教于普林斯顿大学和斯坦福大学。1979年获美国经济学会专为40岁以下有杰出贡献的青年经济学家设立的克拉克奖。1993年至1997年在克林顿政府经济顾问委员会任职，先为成员，后任主席。1997年至1999年担任世界银行高级副行长兼首席经济学家。斯蒂格利茨教授为信息经济学的创立做出了重大贡献，2001年由于他在“充满不对称信息市场的分析”理论研究上的突出贡献而荣获诺贝尔经济学奖。
斯蒂格利茨教授一生著述颇多，涉历广泛，他的学术研究几乎遍及西方经济学的所有领域，包括：宏观经济学、微观经济学、新古典经济增长模型、委托－代理关系、逆向选择、信息经济学、公司财务结构、组织结构、公共部门经济学等。
多年来教授十分关心中国经济的改革和发展，对中国经济问题作了深入研究，结合他个人的经验，提出了许多有价值的参考意见，引起了中国政府部门和经济界人士的广泛兴趣，我国出版界也相继引进出版了教授的一些著作，目前已译成中文有《政府经济学》、《经济学》、《政府为什么干预经济》、《社会主义向何处去》、《全球化及其不满》以及我社最新出版的《喧嚣的九十年代》。
我所认识的斯蒂格利茨博士
Meet A Nobel Laureate: A Sketch Of Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz
文/张屹山
一
2004年3月23日至25日，我们吉林大学商学院和吉林省委财经办公室共同主办了“振兴吉林经济学术报告会”，特邀请了2001年诺贝尔经济学奖获得者约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨博士作为此次大会的主讲，目的是为吉林老工业基地振兴提出一些指导性的意见和建议。当时斯蒂格利茨博士是参加完3月21日至22日在北京钓鱼台国宾馆举行的“2004年中国高层发展论坛”后来到长春的。
一直以来，我都盼想着能有机会邀请斯蒂格利茨博士来我们吉林大学访问。不仅仅因为他是诺贝尔经济学奖获得者，更重要的是我们全体经济学科的老师和学生们对他坚定的崇仰及他对社会经济良性发展的巨大贡献。一个人只要有着执着的努力，机会总会降临的。2003年12月的一天，当我走出省委大楼的大门，感觉寒冬里的阳光是那么地和煦温暖，全身细胞因为兴奋而活跃起来，甚至有着欢呼雀跃的冲动，因为在那一天我知道了斯蒂格利茨博士同意了我们的邀请，将于2004年3月来吉林长春——中国一个不算著名也不算发达的城市访问。而我，就是他来吉林的邀请人和大会组织者。
此次邀请之所以能够成功，必须提起两个人，那就是世界知名经济学家、香港中文大学校长刘遵义教授和他的弟子汪海更博士。刘遵义教授与斯蒂格利茨博士私交甚笃，也正是在他们的协助邀请下，才促成了斯蒂格利茨博士此次的吉林之行。当然，我想国家振兴东北老工业基地的政策和吉林学者的盛情应该也是斯蒂格利茨博士接受邀请的重要原因，毕竟他一直十分关心中国经济的改革和发展。
二
斯蒂格利茨(Joseph E.Stiglitz)1943年出生于美国印第安那州一个叫做加里（Gary, Indiana）的小城, 此城以生产钢铁闻名，但除此之外，这个小城还诞生了两位当代最伟大的经济学家，一位是萨缪尔森，另一位就是斯蒂格利茨。
24岁时，本科毕业仅三年的斯蒂格利茨就获得了麻省理工学院博士学位,此后在剑桥大学从事研究工作。1969年,年仅26岁的斯蒂格利茨被耶鲁大学聘为经济学正教授，三年后他被选为计量经济学会（Econometric ociety）的会员，这是一个经济学家所能获得的最高荣誉之一。1979年,36岁的他获得了美国经济学会两年一度的约翰·贝茨·克拉克奖,该奖项用于表彰对经济学做出杰出贡献的40岁以下经济学家，1988年他成为美国国家科学院（National Academy of Science）院士，同年起-在斯坦福大学任经济学教授。1993年，斯蒂格利茨步入政界，成为克林顿政府的总统经济顾问委员会（Presidential Council of Economic Advisors）成员,并从1995年6月起任该委员会主席。1997年起，他又担任了世界银行高级副行长兼首席经济学家。自2000年至今，斯蒂格利茨执教于哥伦比亚大学。2001年，因为经济学的一个重要分支--信息经济学的创立做出的重大贡献，斯蒂格利茨获得了诺贝尔经济学奖。
对于斯蒂格利茨博士在2001年才获得诺贝尔经济学奖，我和有些学者一样，还是感到有些失望。林毅夫教授认为他应该早在1982年就获得诺贝尔奖，因为他几乎对经济学的各个领域都做出了贡献，而且还不仅限于经济学领域，还包括另外一个重要领域——经济政策。萨缪尔森在一封推荐信中说，“斯蒂格利茨是印第安纳州加里市出来的最伟大的经济学家。”显然，伟大的萨缪尔森认为斯蒂格利茨比自己还要伟大。
瑞典皇家科学院在颁奖典礼上特别说明，在当年的三位获奖者中，斯蒂格利茨博士对不对称信息经济学理论的贡献最大。斯蒂格利茨曾多次强调假如不考虑信息的不对称性的话，那么经济学模型很可能是误导性的。他的这一警示具有巨大的理论意义，因为就不对称信息来说，不同的市场会有不同的特征。这一结论同样适用于公共管理的研究领域。可见斯蒂格利茨的一系列论著不仅是进一步探索信息经济学理论的主要文献，而且也是有关领域深入研究的重要基础。他的有趣的理论，用简单的语言来表述，听起来就和非经济学的常识一样。传统的经济学认为，在自由的不受管制的市场中，个人追求各自的利益会使整个社会的福利最大化。斯蒂格利茨认为现实世界并不是那么回事，相反，他认为，因为市场参与者不能得到充分的信息，市场的功能是不完善的，常常对人们的利益造成损害。所以政府和其他机构必须巧妙地对市场进行干预，以使市场正常运作。
斯蒂格利茨博士在信息经济学文献中堪称是被人们引用得最多的经济学家，在更广泛的微观经济学与宏观经济学领域内也是如此 。他所倡导的一些前沿理论,如逆向选择和道德风险,已成为经济学家和政策制定者的标准工具。 他所著的《经济学》在1993年首次出版后，一版再版，被全球公认为最经典的经济学教材之一，成为继萨缪尔森的《经济学》、曼昆的《经济学原理》之后西方又一本具有里程碑意义的经济学入门教科书。
斯蒂格利茨博士注重发展中国家的状况，常立足于发展中国家的角度阐述问题。他曾尖锐地指责引导经济全球化进程的有关国际机构漠视贫困人群的利益，在消除贫困，促进社会公正方面无所作为。对于国际货币基金组织和世界银行的“消灭贫穷计划”——自由贸易，斯蒂格利茨的观点是，“与19世纪一样，欧洲人和美国人在亚洲、非洲和拉丁美洲到处冲破壁垒打开市场，却阻碍第三世界的农产品进入他们的市场。鸦片战争中，西方用战争来推行他们的不平等贸易；今天，世界银行和国际货币组织使用的金融和财政手段几乎一样有效。”
斯蒂格利茨博士提倡突出政府在宏观调控中的作用，认为获得持续增长和长期效率的最佳方法是找到政府与市场之间的适当平衡，使得世界经济回到一个更加公平、更加稳定的增长进程中，使人人都受益。
如果追溯斯蒂格利茨这些思想的起源，可以先了解一下他的成长过程，他会提到他的父母和他生长的小城，在那里，他的同学们----那些钢铁工人的子女们，使他了解到破产和解雇带来的苦痛。他有一个勤奋的家庭，他的父亲95岁才从保险代理人的岗位上退休，他的母亲，在67岁时按规定从小学教师的岗位上退休后，又开始教人纠正阅读，一直工作到84岁。斯蒂格利茨博士在大学的时候，学习成绩非常优秀，对社会活动也很感兴趣。1963年，也就是大学三年级的时候，他成了学生会主席。那期间，美国民权运动正如火如荼，斯蒂格利茨博士在华盛顿参加了马丁.路德.金博士领导的大游行，那次游行的高潮就是金博士名垂青史的演讲《我有一个梦》。这些社会活动对于塑造他为人和善、天性乐观的性格和他成名后的力倡公平、公正的市场思想应该说都具有很大影响。
三
2004年3月22日晚，我和吉林省委的几个负责人到长春机场迎接斯蒂格利茨博士。虽然已是初春，但北方的天气仍然十分寒冷，周围接机的人们大都紧裹大衣，不停地活动着。而我们那天虽仅穿了西装，却没有感觉到一丝寒冷，在这马上能够和敬仰已久的经济学大师零距离接触的时刻，从大家期盼的目光中，我能体会得到他们都和我一样既兴奋又紧张的心情。当机场通知北京飞来长春的航班已经降落的时候，我们不再谈论任何话题，都全神贯注地翘首注视着，期待着梦想中的身影出现。而于我，甚至感觉到拿着鲜花的手心正在变得潮湿起来。
虽然在这之前，作为一个经济学者，我通过媒体遥远地对斯蒂格利茨博士有着许多了解，但当他真出现在我面前时，还是令我为之一震，敬意由然而生。他一米七五的个子，但显得很魁梧，穿黑色风衣，戴金丝眼镜，短短的头发和稠密的胡子已经花白，目光深邃，牙齿整齐而洁白，笑容谦逊，步履轻盈，精神中透着文雅，全然不像一位六十多岁的老者。
在“振兴吉林经济学术报告会”上，斯蒂格利茨博士让500余名吉林省各界人士见证了他渊博的学识和独到的战略眼光，省市的一些主要领导在市委书记的带领下也来一睹大师的风采。斯蒂格利茨博士此次的专题报告不是他拿手的信息经济学，而是“均衡发展战略”，这是特意根据吉林省的发展情况而量体制作的。他谢绝了工作人员请他就坐的好意，坚持站着将报告进行了3个多小时。报告会上座无虚席，有的学生没有了座位就在台前席地而坐，有的学者和学生一直站在会堂的过道上，没有一个人舍得离开。斯蒂格利茨博士的报告睿智中透着幽默，通俗中蕴涵深奥。结合吉林省的省情和国家振兴东北老工业基地的战略方针，斯蒂格利茨博士提出了几点具有很强借鉴意义的建议。一是随着汽车城的发展，必须提高资源的利用率，保持社会的持续稳定；二是政府要做好规划，避免交通堵塞、大气污染等具体问题；三是在整个振兴东北老工业基地过程中，要把创造新的就业岗位作为一个核心，大力发展中小企业，而政府在其中的作用就是要营造一个良好的环境，其裁判与规则不能过于苛刻。
报告一结束，台下很多学生蜂拥而上，将斯蒂格利茨博士团团围住，那架势不亚于“追”大明星。有的递上纸和笔要求签名；有的拉着他想和他合影；有的围着他想请教经济学问题，整个场面非常热闹。当时已经下午5点多钟了，斯蒂格利茨博士刚刚站着演讲了3个多小时，但面对这些学生，他一直是面带着和蔼的微笑，满足着大家的要求。每和一位学生合影完毕，他都习惯性似的微笑着轻拍拍对方的肩膀，像是给他们以鼓励，嘴里不断地说着“OK”、Thank you”。对于一些学生的提问，他不时还发出爽朗的笑声。20分钟后，当工作人员引领斯蒂格利茨博士离开会场参加记者见面会的时候，他还连声歉意地对没有签到名的学生们说着“Sorry,sorry”。而聚集的人群也是一直跟在博士的身后，久久不愿散去。
在陪同斯蒂格利茨博士参观第一汽车制造厂过程中，他注重技术、观察细微、坦诚直言的性格给我留下了深刻的印象，并产生了深远的影响——不隐瞒地说，有几次在处理工作事务时采取的措施，都是受到斯蒂格利茨博士性格的启发。那天刚一走进一汽的生产车间，斯蒂格利茨博士便开始频频地按下相机的快门，从老解放到新马自达的生产线，他如同随行的记者，认真地记录着每一个感兴趣的地方，并且神情十分庄重，有几次我和他谈话他都没有注意到。在车间的一角，一块贴有照片的光荣榜引起了斯蒂格利茨博士的注意，当他从陪同人员那里知道这些都是生产业务骨干和精英时，当即举起相机将整个宣传板拍了下来。每见到一条生产线，都要问“这是什么车型？”见到工人在安装某个部件也会问“这是什么？”“有什么作用？”他经常询问工人“您今年多大了？”“您是什么学历？”“您是否懂得德语？”他不时地向陪同人员了解一汽的经营情况、职工人数、职工待遇等等，尤其关注职工的学历、退休时间以及工作心情等细节问题，最让我感触的是他甚至问到女职工的产假能休多长时间。这也许就是斯蒂格利茨博士与其他诺贝尔经济学奖获得者的最大不同之处，他不仅在经济学理论上具有巨大的研究贡献，更关注企业的运营管理尤其是发展中国家的职工生活状况，更切实体会着世界弱势群体的境遇，是世界上享有盛誉的爱心经济学大师。我想这和他长期以来从事政府工作有关。
在一个生产线上，斯蒂格利茨博士对一个操作自如的工人竟然驻足观望了半分钟。当看到一名工人站在其他组装人员的身边时，不由得问：“那个站着的人是做什么工作的？”当得知他是整个安装组的班长时，斯蒂格利茨博士笑了，也许是不太满意这样的工作效率。
在参观轿车总装车间时，恰好响起了铃声，马自达生产线停止了工作。当斯蒂格利茨博士得知这是因为午餐休息的原因，便停下了脚步，很严肃地分析了整个生产线后，直率地说到“我认为人员可以轮换，但是不应该闲置设备呀，其实员工可以换班吃饭，一部分人休息，另一部分人上岗，这样整个生产线就不会因为工人休息而停止运行，可以提高劳动生产率，防止资源浪费。”虽然工作人员解释这种生产方式是经过反复论证后才决定的，但斯蒂格利茨博士依旧不依不放，并且还幽默地说“中国的劳动力很丰富，为什么不尝试改变一下？”过后，这位一汽的陪同人员对我说：“斯蒂格利茨博士是我见到过的观察最细致、最敢直言己见的参观者！”
斯蒂格利茨博士的直抒己见在当天晚上的记者见面会上再一次表现出来。当有记者问他对长春机场是什么印象时，他直言：“长春机场的确显得很破旧，但是在中国的许多城市，现有的机场现代化程度已经超出经济发展50年的标准。”他怀疑“这些城市是否对现有资源进行了合理配置。”
四
六十多岁的斯蒂格利茨博士精力好得真让人吃惊。在经过了23日的一整天活动后，24日又精神饱满地对长春高新技术产业开发区、长春市妇联小额借款扶持户创办的公司、吉林大学校园和长春市内一些大商场进行了参观。整个过程中，斯蒂格利茨博士的步伐矫健轻快，兴致高昂，我们几个年轻的陪同人员都很难跟上他走路的速度。斯蒂格利茨博士曾对我说过，他之所以这么健朗，是因为自己平时比较爱好运动，尤其爱好散步，他每天上下班都不坐车，而是选择步行到工作单位。
在我们商学院组织斯蒂格利茨博士参观长春华禹光谷和长春鸿达高技术集团有限公司时，也许是出于职业的原因，斯蒂格利茨博士十分关注的问题是所有产品是否拥有自己的知识产权（intellectual property），公司的股权结构情况是怎样的，公司内员工工作是否开心等。那时斯蒂格利茨博士犹如一个童心未泯的学子，对眼前的一切都充满了好奇。在长春鸿达高技术集团有限公司展厅内，一个指纹保险柜引起了斯蒂格利茨博士的兴趣。斯蒂格利茨博士饶有兴趣地询问是否他的指纹也可以存入系统，当工作人员帮助他成功完成了一次操作全过程后，他的食指轻轻一摸触，门真的开了。此时斯蒂格利茨博士惊喜地称赞“very good!”，并孩子似的仔细端详着自己的食指，逗得陪同人员笑声不断。
斯蒂格利茨博士虽然已经是世界经济界的巨擘，但他虚怀若谷的品质令我十分敬重。24日中午，我代表我们商学院为斯蒂格利茨博士举行了一次小型的宴会，吉林大学的几位经济学者也都应邀一同参加。当我把吉林大学国有经济研究中心主任徐传谌教授介绍给斯蒂格利茨博士时，斯蒂格利茨博士立刻握住徐传谌教授的手，喜不自胜地问：“那您是研究中国国有经济的专家了！我也很感兴趣，您的研究得出了什么结论？中国的国有经济应该怎样改革和发展？”当徐传谌教授简要介绍了我国经济学界对此取得的一些共识及存在的突出问题后，斯蒂格利茨博士又迫不及待地问：“那么要怎样进行调整？在调整、重组过程中企业遇到的困难是什么？”徐传谌教授又一一为他做了详细回答。后来徐传谌教授对我说：来之前他已经准备了好多问题想向斯蒂格利茨博士请教，没有料到求教竟然变成了一种特殊形式的“考试”。
“这位是我校数量经济研究中心主任赵振全教授，主要从事中国股市的研究。”我的话音刚落，斯蒂格利茨博士又马上站起来握住了赵振全教授的手急切地说：“研究中国的股市？您对中国的股票市场有什么看法？中国的上市公司现状如何？”赵振全教授结合我国的宏观经济情况，介绍了中国股市存在的一些问题。斯蒂格利茨博士听得十分认真，并不住地点头。
2004年3月25日是斯蒂格利茨博士离开长春返回美国的日子，许多老师和学生自发地开车陪同博士来到长春机场。对如此热情的送行，斯蒂格利茨博士似乎也感觉非常感动，和蔼地同每一位送行者合影留念并握手道别。当穿着黑色风衣的健硕身影通过安检，转身向大家挥手时，我们才真正地感觉到博士要离开我们了，我们只能在心里默默地祝福他：祝愿这位经济学界的大师一路走好！
http://www.modernbankers.com/modules/news/print.php?storyid=145
斯蒂格利茨:我的经济学人生
——斯蒂格利茨在上海青年发展导航系列讲座上的演讲
作者：约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨来源：解放日报2004-08-29
信息经济学挑战无形的手
一个市场经济要想运转良好，就必须提供信息，如果提供的是错误信息，那就是发出糟糕的信号，其结果就是差劲的资源配置。就像我们在上个世纪90年代末看到的那样，股票市场出现泡沫，资源出现错误配置。
在经济学中，最有影响力的是亚当·斯密的“无形的手”，就是说要通过市场去追求自己的利润，是这只手让市场实现有效性，市场能实现社会正义，能实现财富公平分配，能对穷人有足够的关心，总之通过市场就可以实现经济的有效性。
我所作的是对信息经济学的研究，它表明哪怕信息有任何一点点的不对称，这只无形的手事实上是不存在的，而现实就是这样，信息永远不能完全的充分。换句话讲，经济往往是不高效的。这个道理对经济政策的制定产生了深远的影响。市场本身在没有政府干预的情况下是一个自由主义的任意妄为的经济，是新自由主义的经济，就是所谓绝对的自由市场的经济。但我的研究表明，只要承认信息不完全，那也就应该承认市场不能通过自己的机制实现经济的高效性，一定需要政府干预，这就预示着政府要扮演重要的作用。寻找政府的角色是一个很难的工作，这也是我研究的一个焦点。如果政府太大的话，会扼杀创业精神，企业家就出现不了。要是政府太小的话，就会出现利益的争夺和冲突，企业也表现不好，
信息极其重要，信息直接影响经济在基本面的运作，而信息不完全是有害的。在金融市场、劳动力市场、产品市场这几个市场形态中，最重要的是金融市场。为什么呢？因为金融市场是最关乎信息问题的。如果信息完全对称的话，人人都知道做哪个生意会赚钱，人人都知道应该把钱投向这个领域而不是那个领域。就是因为在金融市场中信息不完全，所以在金融市场作投资决定才是最困难的，因为我们不知道未来会是怎样的。因此，我们应该建立一个有生机的股市，要建立好的银行体系。中国下一阶段经济是否成功也取决于中国能否成功地创建一个强有力的金融市场。
市场经济要发生作用有一个前提条件，那就是要有良好的信息。为了使市场经济的游戏能够正常进行，我们一定要有正确的规则和好的裁判，否则就会产生混乱。
在上世纪九十年代的美国，有一些裁判和法则似乎工作得并不好，比如1993-1994年间讨论的股票期权问题。股票期权就是说CEO或者高级经理人的收入是根据他们的股价获得薪酬，如果股价大涨，他们就会获得更多的收入，有时候会达到几百万甚至几千万。他们很高兴啊，因为期权带来一个好处，那就是它看起来不像一种成本，因为没有人要写一张支票给这个经理人付钱，这些人拿了很多钱但看起来却没有人是付钱的。作为经济学家，我们知道，你不可能无成本经营，无中不能生有。如果你给了经理层某种有价值的东西，它必定来自某个地方，会计制度理应清楚地告诉我们，它来自何方。如果没有人知道他们的钱从哪里来，那么这种信息报告的方式是不好的。
那么，他们的钱是从谁的口袋里掏出来的呢？其实回答很简单，钱就是来自于股东嘛，但是股东自己还不知道，他们就无法来拒绝这一点，所以这是一种盗窃。于是，我们就提出了建议，要让股东了解他们是否愿意向
CEO付钱。这只需进行一项简单的改革，只要在会计报表上报告他们的期权现在的价值是多少就可以了。在我曾经担任主席的总统经济顾问委员会，他们认为这是一个重要的改革，因为它可以增加金融市场信息的质量，这样就可以促进经济有更好的发展。可是财政部却反对，他们认为如果股东知道了他们在给CEO付钱，知道其股本被稀释的程度，那么股价可能会下跌，也就是说他们会低估股票的价值。这一观点完全正确，而这也正是应该进行改革的原因。因为一个市场经济要想运转良好，就必须提供信息，如果提供的是错误信息，那就是发出糟糕的信号，其结果就是差劲的资源配置。就像我们在上个世纪90年代末看到的那样，股票市场出现泡沫，资源出现错误配置。而信息最终肯定是要来的，泡沫最后肯定会破灭，股价会大跌，结果导致我们的经济衰退。所有这些问题，都引起我极大的关注。它们所展现的正是信息经济学的一部分，它们突出地表明，良好的信息体系是多么的重要。
最后，我们还是说要改一改我们的会计体制，必须要披露更好的信息。亚当·斯密提出了这样的观点，你不用担心道德伦理，只要追逐自己的利润就好了。不幸的是亚当·斯密是错的，你必须要考虑到道德，因为市场上有很多的利益冲突。会计的问题就指明了这一点。在过去，会计通过做账、提出建议咨询来获得收入，他们被CEO雇佣，CEO给他们付薪水，也就是说，他们就要去取悦那些CEO。如果CEO想要作假，想要欺骗股东，他们是不敢说：你做得不对，你应该改正，你不该这么做。他们只能附和，因为他们从CEO那里拿到收入，像安达信就是这种情况，其他的会计公司也都发生过这种情况。其实，在危机到来之前，我们对上述问题了如指掌。美国证券和交易委员会主席就说我们应该让会计来做会计而不是提供咨询，但是CEO都拒绝了这一点，他们说不行不行，强力阻止了这一项改革。危机爆发后，股市崩溃，人们充分意识到这种信息是多么的虚假。结果就是现在我们就通过了条例，要求是会计公司仅仅是做会计、做账，坚持独立的会计准则。
这些例子都证明信息经济学不仅改变了经济的理论，同样也革新了日常的经济运作。近年来，在前沿的研究者和政策的实施者之间，时差已经缩短了。过去这种研究要过三四十年才会被人引用，现在很多信息经济学的理论研究出来后五年、十年或者十五年就投入实施了。我在上世纪70年代研究出来的一些理论到了上世纪90年代，已经开始在很多不同的公共政策制定领域使用了，这说明知识的传播速度已经大大加快了。
全球化及其不满
国际贸易间的法制体系本身是一个了不起的成就，因为世界存在贸易强国，所以有这种法制是很重要的。但我们今天的法制体系并不是一个公平的体系，这种体系使工业化国家获得了好处，而发展中国家却得不到好处。
现在我来谈谈第二个话题，就是中国和世界经济的现状。我不会谈每天都会出现的细琐的小问题，因为这些问题报纸上有足够的报告。我想谈的是广泛的在政策制定方面的一些辩论，也就是关于中国和世界经济走向及政策制定的一些问题，尤其值得一提的是我最近出的一本书《全球化及其不满》里谈到的全球化问题。
全球化这个概念，是说世界上的国家彼此之间越来越一体化，各个国家都在不断改进、降低运输和沟通的成本，排除一些障碍，能够彼此超越国界。全球化有好多维度，我大多数的研究是关于经济范围内的全球化，比如产品、服务怎么在全球范围内跨国界自由移动。除此之外，全球化还有好多内涵，这些内容都相当的重要。比如说知识技术的全球化，事实上知识在全球的移动要比商品和服务更自由更广泛。
全球化可以为全球人带来大量的好处。世界上从全球化得益最多的地方就是东亚，东亚在过去的十年中，经济增长显著，收入增长方面以及贫困人口减少方面进步都很显著，出口增长以及对全球技术的掌握也发展得非常快。现在我们看到国与国之间的差异不再是由于资源的贫穷或富足，而是知识占有程度的高低。在过去的5到10年中，全球化促进了知识的跨国界移动，为东亚创造了奇迹，给东亚人民带来了好处。
那为什么还有很多人对全球化不满呢？答案很简单，那就是在其他一些地方，全球化没有给他们带来好处。在拉美，全球化只对当地20%-30%的人带来了好处，甚至只给富人带来了好处，可见全球化给人们带来的好处是不成比例的。
最难回答的问题是为什么全球化能在东亚成功，却在拉美以及其他的一些地方失败了。简而言之，全球化在东亚得到了有效的管理，可是在拉美一些国家，全球化没有得到有效的管理，他们的一些经济条款都是被世界其他国家，尤其是国际货币基金组织强加给他们的，即所谓的新自由主义的条款。这些没有让他们能够很好地管理他们的国家的条款，我们称之为华盛顿共识，这是发达国家输出给发展中国家的一套共识。这套共识并没有基于对发展中国家完整的了解，而是建立在发达国家自己的利益需要和意识形态基础上的一套共识，所以它并不适合发展中国家的实际国情。
现在，可以说说我为什么要去世行任职？因为我在世行可以给华盛顿共识以足够的打击。我发现华盛顿共识是错的，并不是基于经济学的，我的研究表明完全自由主义的市场经济是不行的，应该让市场和政府共同发挥作用。我们需要对银行进行监管，我们需要对股票市场进行监管，你不监管的话这些市场就会失败。你不能假定说所有的经济都会自己解决自己的问题，这是不对的，亚当·斯密是错的。我选择了到世行工作，就是因为我认为华盛顿共识是有违经济学原理的，是没有科学道理的。
第二，我讨厌华盛顿共识还是因为华盛顿共识的所作所为和我在白宫作为内阁成员所做的工作是正好相反的，国际货币基金组织要发达国家所做的东西和发达国家自己要做的东西是完全相反的。我来举个例子，在美国有一个公共的社会保障计划，还有由私人公司提供的私人养老计划。但是公营部分占大头，它的交易成本非常低，成功地为人们提供了保障，这是任何私人公司所无法取代的。它有效地避免了股市的波动，成功地减少了美国贫困人口的数量。克林顿总统的内阁努力使美国的公共养老系统变得强健，可是国际货币基金组织跟发展中国家说你应该让养老系统私营化。可见他们是对内一套，对外一套。这个做法我很难接受，我相当反对国际货币基金组织的这种做法，这也是华盛顿共识最让我不满的一个地方。
人们对全球化的不满还有另一个原因，那就是国际上的游戏规则是不公平、不公正的，是不利于发展中国家的，这一点在贸易领域很明显。国际贸易间的法制体系本身是一个了不起的成就，因为世界存在贸易强国，所以有这种法制是很重要的。但我们今天的法制体系并不是一个公平的体系，这种体系使工业化国家获得了好处，而发展中国家却得不到好处。其实美国或者其他工业化国家的利益就是以穷国的损失为代价的。这是因为不少国际规则其实是不对称的，发展中国家开放了市场，减少了补贴，但发达国家却保留了补贴，而且还是实施配额制度，尤其是对农业大加补贴。世界银行还有一个数字，欧洲的奶牛每天可以得到2美元的补贴，2美元也正是世界银行对于贫困的一个标准，在穷国有20亿人每天的生活费用不到2美元，这就是说在很多穷国做一个人还不如在欧洲做一头牛。美国每年花三四十亿美元来补贴养牛业，就是为那两万五千个已经非常富裕的养牛场。在此同时，在撒哈拉以南的以种植为生的人却很穷。当然美国并不想这样，但这却是他们所实施的一系列政策的结果，这些政策给非洲一些国家造成的损失远远大过了他们得到的外援。
现在有人在谈WTO多哈发展议程的谈判将会何去何从。我的研究结论是，有利于发展中国家的贸易谈判议程应该完全不同于现在的这种发展议程，因为现在的发展议程更多的是有利于发达国家而不是发展中国家。对此，我相信中国可以发挥很重要的作用，中国将来会有更大的机会在全球扮演重要的领导角色。我们要有一种全球团结的责任感，使人们能够公平对待那些因受到不平等对待而不满的人。
怀疑一切与追求公正
听起来很奇怪，我的父母、老师对我强调，不应该关心钱。他们说生活和钱是毫无关系的，生活的重要性根本不体现在钱上，生命的重要性来自于公共服务以及你的思想和所做的研究，因此他们不断地鼓励我去做我想做的事情。
下面我谈谈自己一些个人的情况，谈谈我是怎样成长的。
我在印第安纳州的加里长大，这是在密歇根湖南岸的一个小城，它的起伏变化似乎可以体现美国的经济发展史。在1906年之前，这里没有市镇，是一片海滩，由于地理位置的优越，可以利用煤、铁等资源来炼钢，从而成为了一个很大的钢铁城市。在美国出现后工业化之后，随着钢铁业的衰退，它的人口减少了一半。
在我成长的过程中，有三件事情给我留下了深刻的印象。首先，我生长在一个钢铁城市，她的经济有一定的起伏波动，这是受经济周期影响的。为什么强调这一点呢？因为要是没有一种安全保护，每四年就有一个轮回，就有很多人失业。我的一些同班同学四年以后忽然就没有工作了，他们没有买保险也没有钱进行消费。从同班同学的身上就可以看到我们的社会和经济的问题。
另外一个问题就是我们的那个城市是个多种族混合居住的城市，有很多来自南方的黑人，但还是有很强烈的人种歧视，人们歧视黑人。在世界上最富有的国家，这些黑人通常只接受低等的教育，这是社会的一种不公平。我那时就想在我长大后应该采取措施来改变这种现象。
听起来很奇怪，我的父母、老师对我强调，不应该关心钱。他们说生活和钱是毫无关系的，生活的重要性根本不体现在钱上，生命的重要性来自于公共服务以及你的思想和所做的研究，因此他们不断地鼓励我去做我想做的事情。在我的成长阶段，我的家人就同我进行了很多有关政治和经济的讨论。
后来我进入了阿默斯大学，我觉得阿默斯大学的教学方式对我的成长产生了至关重要的作用。她偏向人文教育，要求学生学习所有的科目。我的主修专业是物理，但是我还得学习英语、历史、生物、化学等等。他们是想要你成为一个有教养的人，去了解一切，这使我在以后拥有了更广阔的视野去研究经济学，而不是成为非常专的研究经济的人。
我觉得阿默斯大学的教学还有一个特点，就是很多的教学采用一种苏格拉底式的教学方法。我们并没有什么讲座，主要是我们问问题他们回答、我们再问他们再回答的一种对话式的教学。在教学过程中，强调的并不是学习某一段材料、写某一个题目，这种教学中最重要的是你提出什么样的问题。其实，要回答问题是很容易的，提出什么样的问题才是关键。所以我们在上学的时候一直在想怎样才能提出更好的问题，因为只要你可以提出更好的问题，那么回答也就不请自来了。这不是说我们获得回答不需要任何努力，只是我觉得这种教学方式使我不断地学习，并最终获得了诺贝尔经济学奖。
我后来又到麻省理工学院读研究生。当时，老师教给我们不少模型，有的同学直接接受了这些模型。他们可以重复他们学过的东西，他们擅长记忆，但是我却觉得有些模型是错的。你可以把“怀疑一切”称之为一种科学的传统、一种民主的传统，只要你自己有想法，你就应该去置疑，这就是阿默斯大学告诉我的，你不应该毫无保留地去接受一切。当我在麻省理工学习的时候，他们说市场就是一个绝佳的模型，但是在我成长的地方我看到那么多的失业，难道这种经济也是完美的么？城市一半的人都失业了，这也是一个完美的市场么？我必须要理解这个模型的问题出在哪一点，因为我想要修复世界中出现的不公正的现象，这就是为什么我要去读研究生院。我看到了巨大的差异，经济模型中体现的理想情况和我现实中看到的情况是相异的，如何把这种差距缩小？另外我还注意到，这种模型根本没有谈到歧视或者公正的问题。对我来说，这是社会非常重要的方面，我们作为经济学家怎么能够忽视公正以及歧视呢？但是，我们社会的很多大学以及我们所学的模型并没有谈到社会的不公平和歧视，所以在当时我就决定要花很多的时间来创建一个模型，用这个模型来了解这种不公正和歧视，我想如果能找到更好的模型的话，那将会有助于我们解决这些问题。
我是60年代在阿默斯上大学的，60年代美国有这样的现象，60年代晚期是越战，在60年代早期却是争取公民权利的斗争。在读书的时候，我们被告知所有的人生来平等，可是我们看到的却是歧视以及南方的种族隔离制度，这种平等的权利被伤害了。这些教会我公民权利确实是有用的，对我来说也意味着变革是可能的，意味着认识到社会的问题，我们就可以对其加以改进。首先我们要找到如何进行改革，这就是为什么我非常热衷于全球化的一些讨论，因为这谈到了公平和公正的问题，还谈到了那种不正确的经济理念。有些人说世界本来就这样的嘛，我是坚决反对这一点的。虽然变化不会一蹴而就，但只要我们意识到这种不公平的存在，我们就可以尝试采用学术界的一些原理，说明为什么人们愿意这样做而不愿意那样做。所以我就写了两本书，其中一本就是为什么在90年代全球化没有让所有国家同时获益，希望通过这本书让人们意识到全球化存在哪些问题，让我们意识到在社会范围内有哪些力量最终会改变全球的社会，从而实现一种对全球人都公正的秩序。
Joseph E. Stiglitz – Autobiography
I was born in Gary, Indiana, at the time, a major steel town on the southern shores of Lake Michigan, on February 9, 1943. Both of my parents were born within six miles of Gary, early in the century, and continued to live in the area until 1997. I sometimes thought that my perignations made up for their stability.
There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists. (Paul allegedly once wrote a letter of recommendation for me which summarized my accomplishments by saying that I was the best economist from Gary, Indiana.) 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.
I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely. My mother's family were New Deal Democrats - they worshipped FDR; and though my uncle was a highly successful lawyer and real estate entrepreneur, he was staunchly pro-labor. My father, on the other hand, was probably more aptly described as a Jeffersonian democrat; a small businessman (an independent insurance agent) himself, he repeatedly spoke of the virtues of self-employment, of being one's own boss, of self-reliance. He worried about big business, and valued our competition laws. I saw him, conservative by nature, buffeted by the marked changes in American society during the near-century of his life, and adapt to these changes. By the midseventies, he had become a strong advocate of civil rights. He had a deep sense of civic and moral responsibility. He was one of the few people I knew who insisted on paying social security contributions for household help - regardless of whether they wanted it or not; he knew they would need it when they were old. (This attitude served me well; in 1993, while many Clinton appointees faced problems in being vetted because of their failure to pay these taxes, I was spared these problems because I had followed his example.)
I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life. The Gary public school system was designed to integrate the immigrants who constituted such a large fraction of its inhabitant; here, the melting pot rhetoric that is so important part of America's, self-image was taken seriously. All of us had to learn, for instance, two trades (mine were printing and being an electrician). I had the good fortune of having dedicated teachers, who in spite of relatively large classes, provided a high level of individual attention. 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.
The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy. Every year, a national debating topic is chosen. (One year, it was the reform of the agricultural support programs, an issue which I had to grapple with almost forty years later; some of my colleagues in the Clinton Administration too had been debaters, but they got taken up by the sport. I was attracted more by the ideas.) In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue - it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.
The intellectually most formative experiences occurred during the three years 1960-1963 I spent at Amherst college, a small, New England college (at the time, a men's college with around 1000 students). 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. Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education. (Today, I serve on its board of trustees.) The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities. But what distinguished Amherst was not only what was taught, but how it was taught, and the close relationships we had with our teachers. The best teachers still taught in a Socratic style, asking questions, responding to the answers with still another question. And in all of our courses, we were taught that what mattered most was asking the right question - having posed the question well, answering the question was often a relatively easy matter.
I thrived on the atmosphere; while until late in my third year, I majored in physics, and enjoyed immensely the camaraderie of the physics students as we strove to solve the hard problems that were assigned to us. I took a smattering of courses in mathematics, history, English, philosophy, and the standard fare of introductory biology and chemistry. I still remember well the courses, and have frequently drawn upon this learning. For instance, the discussions of the encounters between different civilizations that was a major theme in our Freshman history class helped shape my thinking about globalization more than three decades later; I felt I was in a better position to think about the current episode from an historical perspective, and see it more through the eyes of the other side.
But while I loved all of these courses, there was an irresistible attraction of economics. My three teachers at Amherst showed me the range of the subject: Arnold Collery, later to be Dean of Columbia College, was a thoughtful and erudite scholar, from whom I studied both micro-economics and macro-economics. The style of teaching was exemplified by his choice of texts for the micro course. Rather than a standard textbook, he used Abba Lerner's Economics of Control, a book written as a theoretical contribution to our understanding of how markets work, an inquiry into whether planning provided an alternative. James Nelson, who taught me introductory economics, was a vivacious policy economist, who conveyed the sense of excitement that came from trying to shape economic policies. Finally, Ralph Beals was a young graduate of MIT, trained in mathematical techniques that were just then coming into vogue. It was not until late in the spring of my junior (third) year that I decided to major in economics; I thought it provided an opportunity for me to apply my interests and abilities in mathematics to important social problems, and somehow, I thought it would also enable me to combine my interest in history and in writing. I wanted it all, and economics seemed to have it all. When I advised my teachers of my decision, they advised me that I should go on to graduate school. What I would study during my senior year would be largely repeated in my first year of graduate school. They then arranged for me to go to MIT, and to receive the finance I required (I had been on full scholarship at Amherst; the modest last minute fellowship from MIT entailed my living on a dollar a day beyond my rent - the number that today is taken as the threshold for absolute poverty.) The flexibility of MIT, and Amherst, - the deadlines for application were well past, the money for fellowships had largely already been dispensed - is a tribute to America's higher educational system, and one of the reasons that it continues to excel. I left Amherst for MIT without a degree, or without any promise of one. It was before I had done my work on the economics of information, and I think I didn't grasp the information that might be conveyed by having a degree from Amherst. I simply wanted to learn as much as I could as quickly as I could - not from any sense of "getting ahead" but simply from an overwhelming sense that there was so much to learn, and one needed to get on with it. (Later, Amherst did give me a degree, and still later, in 1974, they gave me an honorary doctorate.) One of my teachers, and one of the world's greatest economists, Hirofumi Uzawa, when asked where he got his advanced degree, would say they he had no degree to speak of; in academic circles, there is a certain pride in simply having pursued one's studies on one's own, outside the confines of a regular program. If Amherst hadn't given me a degree, I could have given a similar response.
My love of politics first manifested itself in my days at Amherst. I served on the Student Council both in my freshman and sophomore years (there were three representatives from each class), and in junior year, got elected president of the student council. My conviction that if one attains positions of "power" one should view them as opportunities for social change also manifested itself. I began a campaign to abolish fraternities (to which 90% of the students belonged), because they were socially divisive, and contrary to the spirit of a liberal arts school and community. It was a campaign that was not welcomed by many of my classmates, and it took years to come to fruition, but it did, and I believe that Amherst is the better for it. This was only one of the many issues that I raised in my "activist" presidency. I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights. We were impatient with those (like President Kennedy) who took a cautious approach. How could we continue to countenance these injustices that had gone on so long. (The fact that so many people in the establishment seemed to do so - as they had accepted colonialism, slavery, and other forms of oppression - left a life-long mark. It reinforced a distrust of authority which I had had from childhood.) I marched on Washington - the march where Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream" speech remains an indelible memory. I organized an exchange program with a small, African-American, southern school; I believed it was important for us to understand, as much as we could, what they were confronting. These were the years where many civil rights activists from the North were killed; but in our enthusiasm for doing what was right, these risks never crossed our minds.
Not surprisingly, there was considerable opposition to some of my initiatives, so much so that a recall referendum was initiated. It was also my first encounter with the power of the press and personal rivalries; the editor of the student paper took on the cause of removing me. But my friends and allies beat back the initiative, and I continued to use the platform of the presidency of the student council to promote social change.
Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist. I spent but two years at MIT as a student (I did my generals in a year and a half, and then began writing my thesis.) It was the hey-day of MIT with first-rate professors (I had at least four Nobel Prize winners as professor: Samuelson (Nobel Laureate in 1970), Solow (Nobel Laureate in 1987), Modigliani (Nobel Laureate in 1985), and Arrow (Nobel Laureate in 1972)) teaching first-rate students. My first paper presented at an academic meeting, to the econometric society, was jointly co-authored with George Akerlof, with whom I shared this year's prize. I had many other first rate classmates that were to make truly important contributions to economics.
The particular style of MIT economics suited me well - simple and concrete models, directed at answering important and relevant questions. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I gone to one of the universities in which other styles of economics were taught, either the abstract general equilibrium models, for which Berkeley was then noted, or the simpler partial equilibrium models for which Chicago was famous. The politics of MIT also suited me well. My teachers were mostly establishment liberals, but there were a few that were more questioning. I wonder too how I would have fared had I gone to one of the schools, like Chicago, where there is a more conservative bent. Would I have changed? Or would I have just been unhappy?
But, as I comment in my Prize lecture, there was an incongruity between many of the models that we were taught and the policy positions that our teachers (and we) believed in. The models seemed more consonant with free market prescriptions, though they were presented more as benchmarks rather than full characterizations.
The students and faculty at MIT were highly interactive. There was a group of friends (mostly from the year ahead of me, including George), which included a few young economists from Harvard, with whom I spent much of my time. We lived economics and politics. We debated about what was wrong with the models that we were being taught. We thought about how we could or would go about changing the models, and occasionally about how we could or would go about changing the world. One of our group was from India (Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri) and we learned from him a host of stories concerning the colonial experience.
After my first year as a graduate student, I was offered a wonderful opportunity, editing Paul Samuelson's collected papers. I often took Paul as a role model, the expansiveness of his learning, the breadth of his work, its originality and penetration. He wrote forcefully and beautifully. For many years after leaving MIT, I was best known as Samuelson's editor, which I did not always appreciate, since I wanted to be known for my own work.
The summer after my second year as a graduate student was one of the most exciting. Hirofumi Uzawa had moved from Stanford to Chicago, and had received an NSF grant to bring around a dozen graduate students from around the country to work together on theory. Eytan Sheshinki and his wife Ruthie, George Akerlof, Mrinal Datta-Chaudhuri, Georgio LaMalfa (later to be head of the Republican party of Italy and a minister in several of that country's governments) and his wife, Eva drove off to Chicago. We stopped on the way at my home in Gary for a night, where my parents were delighted to have a chance to meet my friends. At Chicago, we were joined by some of Hiro's Chicago students and by Frank Levy from Yale (who now teaches at MIT), among others. Growth theory was then all the rage, and we did growth theory, day in and day out. Many of us worked on technical change, on work which would be rediscovered, two decades later and popularized under the name of endogenous growth theory. (The fact that the work that was done in this period received so little attention in the subsequent revival of interest in growth theory two decades later has been a subject of some interest to me, as part of what may be thought of as the sociology of knowledge. Economists tend to move in particular circles, defined by their "school" and "subject." Endogenous growth theory in the 80s grew out of the Chicago school, while the earlier work on growth theory was part of the MIT school - treating Uzawa, though a professor at Chicago, as an honorary member of the MIT fraternity. I moved both across schools and subjects. This allowed me to learn from each, and the cross fertilization was highly productive. But it did pose problems. Not being a dues paying member of any particular school/subdiscipline sometimes meant it was more difficult to get one's ideas accepted, or even widely discussed. This was particularly the case in macro-economics, where in the 70s and 80s, the reining paradigms were either rational expectations/representative agent models or fixed price new Keynesian models. The models that Greenwald and I formulated, focusing on imperfect capital markets, risk averse, credit constrained firms, in which concerns about bankruptcy often play an important role, only became widely accepted after similar ideas were picked up by the card carrying members of the macro-fraternity.)
While the group of us who went to Chicago to study under Uzawa was supposedly chosen for our prowess as students, we shared a broad weltanschauung. As the month of intensive work ended, leaving a lifelong impression on all of us, most of us went up to George's family place on Lake Squam. I was working as Bob Solow's research assistant, and so had to commute from Cambridge.
After two years at MIT (supported in the second year by the National Science Foundation), I received a Fulbright fellowship to Cambridge for 1965-1966. At the time, there were three High Churches in the economics profession: Chicago on the right and Cambridge, U.K. on the left, with MIT being in the center. Cambridge was still basking in the reflected glory of Keynes, who had revolutionized economics some thirty years earlier. Lord Kahn, of the Kahn multiplier (which explained how a dollar of government expenditure had a multiple effect in increasing GDP), Joan Robinson, Nicky Kaldor, James Meade, David Champernowne, Piero Sraffa, these were among the gods that populated the colleges of Cambridge. I wanted to see as many views as I could, and I worried about coming too much under the influence of Samuelson and Solow. Joan Robinson was assigned as my tutor. She had originally wanted me to redo my undergraduate degree - she thought it would take some time to undo the damage of my MIT education, but eventually she was prevailed upon instead to take on the responsibility of my re-education. We had a tumultuous relationship. Evidently, she wasn't used to the kind of questioning stance of a brash American student, even a soft-spoken one from the mid-west, and after one term, I switched to Frank Hahn. He was flamboyant, and always intellectually provocative. Cambridge was in ferment. The quality of the students and the young lecturers matched that of the gray eminces: Jim Mirrlees (later to get the Nobel prize), Partha Dasgupta, Tony Atkinson; Geoff Heal, David Newbery and a host of others. There was a sense of excitement that was associated not just with the generation of new ideas, but with the belief that those ideas were important, and not just for economics, but for society more broadly. As Frank Hahn demonstrated the dynamic instability of the economy (a problem posed by the absence of futures markets going out infinitely far into the future; in technical terms, the absence of a transversality condition), he would excitedly exclaim that he had put another nail in the coffin of capitalism.
One evening I gave a seminar on a paper I was then completing, on the distribution of income among individuals (using the kinds of tools that had been used to describe the dynamics of growth to describe the dynamics of inequality). The discussion had been followed by a lively debate. The next morning, I received a twenty-page comment from James Meade (who received the Nobel Prize in 1977), suggesting elaborations and alternative interpretations. There was a sense of a community of scholars trying to understand some very important and complex problems.
My research in this period centered around growth, technical change, and income distribution, both how growth affected the distribution of income and how the distribution of income affected growth. The most important paper to emerge from my thesis, "The Distribution of Income and Wealth Among Individuals,"1 received considerable attention at the time, but unfortunately, the topic has not been one which has received much attention from the economic profession, so that it has not generated as much follow-on research as I had hoped.
But the subject of the causes and consequences of inequality has remained one of my abiding concerns, one which I pursued as I began to delve into the economics of information.2
My early research project in this area illustrated one feature of my research style which, while it may have contributed to the overall success of some of my research program, was a source of unending frustration. Once I undertook the analysis of a problem, I often looked at it from a variety of perspectives. I approached the problem as a series of thought experiments - unlike many other sciences, we typically cannot do actual experiments. I would construct models changing one assumption or the other. Each would provide some insight into what drove the results. The whole was more than the sum of the parts; while each of the models was, by itself, of some interest, it was the collection of models, and how the results depended on the particular assumptions employed, which provided the greatest insight. My original work thus grew into a monograph of some hundred pages. Unfortunately, the preferred form of expression in the profession was narrowly defined articles, making a single point. I thus had to extract from the longer monograph a series of papers, a process which not only took a long time, but diminished (in my judgment) the insights provided. (This problem was even greater in the next two research projects, one exploring the behavior of the firm under uncertainty, and in particular, the consequences of risk with an incomplete set of risk markets; most (but not all) of that "paper" - an eight hour lecture I delivered in 1970 at Hakone, Japan, in another one of Hirofumi Uzawa's workshops - was published as a series of articles over the next decade.3 The exploration of "Alternative theories of wage determination and unemployment in less developing countries," completed while I was at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi in the summer of 1969, was similarly published in a series of articles - the most recent of which was not published until 1992).4
Another project that I began in Cambridge concerned the interaction between the distribution of income and short run macro economic behavior. At the time, most macro economic models simply assumed that wages and prices were fixed. But, of course, during the great depression wages and prices had fallen considerably. The problem was not that they were absolutely fixed, but with the dynamics of adjustment. With Robert Solow (Solow and Stiglitz, 1968), I explored these dynamics, to explain the persistence of unemployment. With George Akerlof (see Akerlof and Stiglitz, 1969), I showed how such dynamics can give rise to cyclical behavior. Later work would attempt to provide stronger micro foundations for these adjustment dynamics.
I returned from Cambridge to take up a one-year appointment as an assistant professor at MIT, from which I went to Yale. My teaching at Yale seemingly warranted an indefinite deferment from the Vietnam War draft. During this period, I continued my work on economic dynamics, and began my research on the economics of uncertainty, which in turn, quickly led to the work on the economics of information.
The major concern in my research on dynamics was the stability of the market economy. The standard models assumed that there were future markets extending infinitely far into the future. Following work of Frank Hahn (1966), Karl Shell and I showed that a competitive economy with futures markets extending an arbitrarily large finite number of periods into the future would, in general, exhibit dynamic instabilities; that is, it would take off onto a path that appeared to be efficient and stable, with the inefficiency and instability only manifesting itself some distance into the future (Shell and Stiglitz, 1967). This theme was explored in a variety of different contexts. The subject was central to the on-going debate concerning the efficiency of the capitalist economy. If stability and efficiency required that there existed markets that extended infinitely far into the future - and these markets clearly did not exist - what assurance do we have of the stability and efficiency of the capitalist system? In one important variant on this theme, I assumed that there were rational expectations. Simplistic representative agent models living infinitely long had been constructed, and, not surprisingly, in these models, the problems of instability and inefficiency did not arise. I assumed, on the contrary, that individuals were finitely lived; there were overlapping generations. In that case, there were an infinite number of paths consistent with rational expectations extending infinitely far into the future. (Stiglitz, 1973b.)
This concern with multiplicity of equilibrium (both in the short run and the long) was to appear over and over again in my subsequent work, where under a wide variety of circumstances, the economy could be trapped in a "bad" equilibrium. In some cases, some individuals are better off in one equilibrium, some worse off, but in other cases, one equilibrium could Pareto dominate others.5
Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation. Thus, in much of my earlier work I began by asking what would happen to the standard results if there were not the complete set of risk markets which Arrow and Debreu (Nobel Laureate in 1983) had postulated in their analysis of competitive equilibrium. This was a question which one could approach largely (though not entirely) deductively. (Stiglitz, 1972a, 1982b.) But my research in this area quickly posed problems for which there was no obvious answer: what should (or do) firms maximize? This early work exposed how sensitive not only were the results of the standard model to the (clearly unrealistic) assumptions posited, but even the reasonableness of the assumed behavior.6 As my work progressed, the discrepancies between the kind of behavior implied by the standard model and actual behavior also became increasingly clear. In the standard model, the only risk that firms should worry about was the correlation of the outcomes (profits) with the "market"; in practice, businesses seem to pay less attention to that than they do to "own" risk, the chance the project will succeed or fail. In the standard model, everyone agrees about what the firm should do; in practice, there are often heated disagreements. It seemed to me that any persuasive theory of the firm had to be consistent with these, and other, aspects of widely observed firm behavior. (Stiglitz, 1982c, 1989b.)
Economists spend enormous energy providing refined testing to their models. Economists often seem to forget that some of the most important theories in physics are either verified or refuted by a single observation, or a limited number of observations (e.g. Einstein's theory of relativity, or the theory of black holes). Thus, models which suggested that there was no such thing as unemployment, or that it was at most short lived, to my mind were suspect. Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom. Perhaps the most important result in the economics of uncertainty in the 1950s was that of Modigliani and Miller (Nobel Laureate in 1990), who argued that corporate financial structure - whether firms finance themselves with debt or equity - made no difference (other than as a result of taxes). What was interesting about the theory was that it was based on assumptions of rational behavior, and yet if it were true, there was ample evidence of market irrationality - the thousands of people on Wall Street and other financial centers who seemed to be worrying about corporate finance - and for reasons that had nothing to do with taxation. I began my analysis of corporate finance by demonstrating that the result was far more general than they had shown. (Stiglitz, 1969b.) But there were two assumptions that they had ignored, and these turned out to be crucial: they had assumed no bankruptcy and perfect (or at least symmetric) information. Over the succeeding years, I was to explore the consequences of these (related) assumptions, not only for the theories of corporate finance, but also for corporate governance (including takeovers) and macro-economics. As I note in my Prize lecture, the failure of the IMF to take on board fully the consequences of these assumptions played an important role in their policy failures almost three decades later.
My work on the economics of uncertainty led naturally to the work on information asymmetries, and more generally, imperfect information. In the work on the economics of uncertainty, I explored the consequences, given beliefs about probability distributions, say, of prices and outputs, of economic behavior. The standard theory not only had assumed that there was a complete set of markets for these risks, but that beliefs about these probability distributions were exogenous, unaffected by any actions. But individuals and firms spend an enormous amount of resources acquiring information, which affects their beliefs; and actions of others too affect their beliefs.
As I approached the problems that are today referred to as the economics of information, I was greatly helped by the breadth of my education at Amherst and MIT. The problem of how people form their beliefs is, of course, the central question of statistics: making inferences on the basis of limited data. The first course for which I served as a teaching assistant was statistics (with Harold Freeman), and it was concerned with using probability theory to make statistical inferences (rather than "classical" statistics). I am sure that I was, at least subconsciously, affected too by the work going on in Cambridge in statistical decision theory, by people like Raiffa, and while I never took a course from him, he was active in the Harvard-MIT theory seminar, and was a presence at the dinners we often had afterwards.
Another set of central insights came from the work that I had been doing in public finance (as it was called at that time; with my 1984 textbook, I helped shift the sub discipline to focus more broadly on the economics of the public sector.) 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. This is, of course, the central concern of public goods, one of the main subjects within the economics of the public sector. I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous. (See, e.g. Stiglitz, 1987a.) Much of the subsequent work was trying to define more precisely the nature of the market failures.
As I explain in my Nobel lecture, the time I spent in Kenya was pivotal in the development of my ideas on the economics of information. I have often wondered why. I think in part the reason is that seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are. As I studied development, I was forced to think everything through from first principles. Had I grown up in a world in which everyone was a sharecropper, I probably would have accepted this as the way things are. As it was, sharecropping seemed like a peculiar institution, for it seemed to attenuate greatly the incentives workers had to work (since they typically had to give one out of two dollars that they earned to the landlord). Similarly, growing up in Gary Indiana gave me, I think, a distinct advantage over many of my classmates who had grown up in affluent suburbs. They could read articles that argued that in competitive equilibrium, there could not be discrimination, so long as there are some non-discriminatory individuals or firms, since it would pay any such firm to hire the lower wage discriminated - against individuals, and take them seriously. I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced. To me, the theorem simply proved that one or more of the assumptions that went into the theory was wrong; my task, as a theorist, was to figure out which assumptions were the critical ones.
A topic of abiding concern since I was in high school was economic organization. I grew up in the midst of the cold war. At the time, Communism seemed to be delivering faster economic growth, but at the expense of liberty. Much of the world seemed to be suffering under the yoke of colonialism, which neither delivered economic growth or democracy, and one which seemed to inconsistent with the principles in which I had been taught, and come to believe. The market economy seemed to be plagued by repeated periods of unemployment, and to leave large fractions of the population in poverty. Yugoslavia's system of self-managed firms intrigued me. Economics seemed to provide the tools with which one could analyze these alternative economic systems. A central question was how, and how well, alternative systems addressed the problems of gathering, analyzing, and disseminating information, and making decisions based on imperfect information. Understanding the limitations of the market - the so-called market failures - became one of the central foci of my research.
I recognized that the standard model was deficient not only in its assumptions about information, but also in ignoring technical change. The latter I thought particularly curious, given the importance that technical change clearly played in our economy. I joined the growing band of those who paid homage to Joseph Schumpeter because of his emphasis on technical change, a subject which was not even broached in the standard first year graduate economics course, let alone in undergraduate principles courses. (I tried to remedy the latter deficiency by introducing a chapter on the subject in my Principles book.) But while I thought that Schumpeter had asked the right question, I was not convinced he gave the right answer. The close links between the work that I had been doing on information and technical change allowed me to begin to formalize models of Schumpeterian competition, and I quickly realized that several of the "accepted" results of Schumpeterian competition were not valid, e.g. that there would necessarily be a succession of short lived monopolies. (See, e.g. Dasgupta and Stiglitz, 1980a, 1980b, 1981, 1988.) I showed that a monopoly, once established, could be persistent, that Schumpeterian competition was not, in general, "efficient," and that in particular the incumbent could/would take actions which deterred entry, that potential competition would not in general suffice to ensure a rapid (efficient) pace of innovation. These ideas are, of course, of particular relevance in the "new economy," which centers around innovation.
There was a rather different strand of literature (often associated with Hayek) which praised the virtues of the market economy, not the basis of the standard competitive (Arrow Debreu) mode, or on the basis of Schumpeterian competition, but rather on "evolutionary" grounds. In the early 70s, I had become fascinated with this alternative approach, and begun to subject it to scrutiny. At the time, there was little formal work on evolutionary modeling, and even later, most of the modeling focused around describing (often in simulation exercises) evolutionary processes. I was interested in evaluating evolutionary processes. What could one say about whether free markets, by themselves, led to "efficient" or "desirable" evolution? Were there interventions in the market which might "shape" evolution in ways which would lead to better outcomes? Hayek and his disciples had argued for free markets, but never really even addressed these questions. This remains a question that has still not been well investigated, but preliminary results (cited in my Prize lecture) suggest strongly the limitations of unfettered free market evolution. (Part, but only part, of the problem lies with imperfections of capital markets.)
Later, with the collapse of the Soviet system, and the recognition of the problems of socialism more broadly, I rethought the lessons that might be gleaned from the failed experiment. In Whither Socialism? (See Stiglitz, 1994) I came to the conclusion that the failure of the socialist economies reinforced my belief in the inadequacy of the competitive equilibrium model. If that model had been correct, market socialism probably could have succeeded. The standard competitive market equilibrium model had failed to recognize the complexity of the information problem facing the economy - just as the socialists had. Their view of decentralization was similarly oversimplified - a point which I had earlier emphasized in my work with Raj Sah, where we had compared hierarchical and polyarchical decision making structures7. Here, our concern was not with asymmetries of information or incentives, but with how different economic organizational structures in effect aggregated the disparate and limited information of different individuals.
As the former socialist economies decided to make the transition to a market economy, a host of fascinating problems was posed on how best to make that transition. China provided the first venue for looking at these questions, in a series of meetings in 1980 and 1981, and Russia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe provide a second. The debates were heated. Much was at stake. And underlying the debate were very different understandings of the fundamentals of a market economy - what was necessary to make it function. My views on the inadequacy of the standard model played a central role in my thinking. I emphasized the importance of competition, corporate governance, finance, and more broadly the institutional (including legal) infrastructure. I did not place much stress on privatization. I was part of a wider school, sometimes referred to as "gradualists," as opposed to the shock therapists that focused on rapid transitions, with quick privatization. The strategy for transition that I advocated was markedly different from that pushed by the IMF and the shock therapists. The failures of so many countries to make a successful transition back to a market economy has provided new insights into what makes market economies function, one which I had occasion to explore during my years as the Chief Economist of the World Bank. There is now a wide consensus on the importance of the institutional infrastructure, and on the dangers of rapid privatization. (See the references cited in my Prize lecture.)
I referred earlier to my work in the economics of the public sector.8 I was convinced that there was an important role for government to play. Given that, it was natural for me to turn to the question of how it could play that role most effectively. (See, e.g. Stiglitz, 1991, 1997a.) One of the main questions with which I was concerned was how to redistribute income in a way as to minimize the loss in efficiency that is inevitably associated with tax distortions. Economics of information had provided a framework within which this question could, for the first time, be addressed in a meaningful way, as I explain in my Prize lecture.
Still another important strand of my research, only tangentially related to my work on the economics of information, concerned industrial organization. In one of my most cited papers, that with Avinash Dixit9, we constructed a model in which there are so many firms that each can ignore its impact on others' economic actions, but still, firms face downward sloping demand curves - there is monopolistic competition. This seemed to describe many of the markets in the economy far better than either the models of pure competition, pure monopoly, or oligopoly. (Markets in which information is imperfect are also likely to be characterized by monopolist competition). Little progress on the theory of monopolistic competition had been made in the more than forty years since Edwin Chamberlain first broached the idea. In particular, he had only formulated a partial equilibrium model. We were interested in constructing a general equilibrium model, within which one could assess how well the market functioned, in particular in making the tradeoffs between economies of scale and product diversity. We showed that there was a single borderline case - of immense simplicity - in which the market made that trade-off perfectly; but more generally, it did not.10
While my work on industrial organization and imperfect information undermined the confidence in the ability of unfettered markets to allocate resources efficiently, there was another strand of research in the economics profession which was trying to argue the contrary. In particular, there were those who argued that even with natural monopoly markets could be efficient; competition for the market could replace competition in the market; all that one required was potential competition. On the face of it, this idea seemed suspect. If it were true, there would be no monopoly rents. And indeed, my suspicions turned out to be true: I showed that even if there were arbitrarily small sunk costs (which there always are) then potential competition would not suffice to limit the abuses of monopoly.11
The most important systemic failure associated with the market economy is the periodic episodes of underutilization of resources. Trying to understand why the labor market does not clear - why there is persistent unemployment - has been another abiding concern, one which I have tried to approach from a variety of angles. The work with Solow and with Akerlof cited above focused on the consequences of finite speeds of adjustment. Even if wages fall, if prices fall too, real wages may not adjust very quickly. Subsequent work with Greenwald tried to explain in a more coherent way these speeds of adjustment.12 The efficiency wage theories (described in greater detail in my Prize lecture) explain why it may pay firms to pay a wage higher than the market clearing wage: the increase in productivity more than offsets the increase in wages. The theory of equity rationing13 helped explain why more "flexible" contractual arrangements were not adopted; such arrangements (such as those where wages depend on firm profitability) in effect make the worker have an implied equity stake in the firm, and, given asymmetries of information, the value which workers are willing to assign to such contractual provisions is less than that which is acceptable to the firm.
The 1970s and 1980s represented decades during which the rational expectations/representative agent model was in ascendancy. This model suggested not only that, with rational expectations, government policy was ineffective, but that unemployment was not a serious problem. Neither of these conclusions made much sense to me; and with my former student, Peter Neary, we sought to show that the results depended not on the rational expectations assumption, but on the assumptions concerning wage and price flexibility. We constructed a fixed wage/price model with rational expectations, and showed contrary to the suggestion of the rational expectations school, not only could unemployment be persistent, but that government policy was even more effective with rational expectations that without it (i.e. multipliers associated with government expenditures were larger). The reason was simple: an increase in government expenditures today had some spill overs to future periods. Today's increased savings translated into tomorrow's increased income, and, with rational expectations, that increased income translated into higher consumption today. We also showed that there were multiple rational expectations equilibria: if everyone was pessimistic, then income would indeed be low today and tomorrow; but if everyone was optimistic, then both could be high.
Our work also emphasized that it was not just wage and price rigidities which could give rise to macro-economic problems. (This work could be thought of as a revival and formalization of Fisher's earlier work on debt deflation14.) Incomplete contracts meant that unanticipated changes in wages and prices had large distributional effects, with correspondingly large consequences. While when we first put forward these ideas almost twenty years ago, they met with considerable resistance, they are now coming to be more widely accepted.
While I spent most of my time teaching and doing research, I learned a great deal from the limited amount of consulting I did, and I thought it important to engage in issues of public policy. My first major consulting project was a direct outgrowth of work on imperfect information; it was concerned with the information externalities that arose in the process of oil exploration, externalities which played an important role in a heated dispute between the federal government and the states (which was eventually settled out of court for $12 billion). A variety of other consultations, typically associated either with antitrust violations or issues of corporate governance, gave me insights both into how real markets work as well as the behavior of firms.
In the 1980s, I was involved in two major public interest litigations, one concerning the treatment of Native Americans, the other with the exploitation of our natural resources. The first, involving the Seneca Indians in upstate New York, gave me further insights into the nature of America's past - and ongoing - exploitation of Native Americans. An unfair lease that had been imposed on the tribe was about to expire, and it insisted that it would renew only on more equitable terms. I helped calculate the magnitude of the amount by which the previous lease had "cheated" them - magnitudes in excess of a billion dollars in present terms - and though the tribe was never compensated for these past injuries, the information I provided did, I think, contribute to a settlement which was far fairer than would otherwise have been the case.
The second suit was one against the federal government. In the 1980s, President Reagan tried to turn over as much of the offshore oil tracts to private companies as fast as he could - the fire sale was a give-away to the oil companies, depriving the American taxpayers of billions of dollars. Working with Jeffrey Leitzinger and a conservation minded NGO, -NRDC, we tried to estimate this cost, and, unsuccessfully, to bloc the fire sales.
I moved to Washington in March 1992 to join the Clinton Administration, first as a member, and then as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, in which capacity I also served as a member of the cabinet. The Council helps formulate economic policies for the Administration, and serves as a consultant for all the agencies in the government. Our span of responsibilities included not only macro-economics, but policies in almost every sphere, from trade to anti-trust, from environment to agriculture, from energy to transportation, from welfare to health, from social security to taxation, from affirmative action, to tort reform. It was a wonderful experience - I had to draw upon all of my previous research, all my connections, and go beyond. I became deeply involved in environmental issues, which included serving on the International Panel for Climate Control, and helping draft a new law (including a new legal framework) for toxic wastes (which unfortunately never got passed). I was pleased to see how ideas that I had helped formulate only a few years earlier, like adverse selection and moral hazard, were now part of the every day language of the policy debate in health care.15
Perhaps our most important contribution in this period was helping define a new economic philosophy, a "third way," which recognized the important, but limited, role of government, that unfettered markets often did not work well, but that government was not always able to correct the limitations of markets. The research that I had been conducting over the preceding twenty five years provided the intellectual foundations for this "third way."
Being on the Council was particularly exciting for me as a student of the economics of the public sector. I was a fly on the wall - but at the same time - I could work to put into place some of the ideas that I had been developing.
I believe that institutions like the Council play an important role in our democracies. Work on information asymmetries emphasized the importance of incentives and the discrepancy between the incentives of government officials, and in particular professional politicians, and those who they are supposed to serve. As a citizen-bureaucrat, the members of the council, who are typically drawn from academia and return to academia, have markedly different incentives than those of a professional politician. Typically, though not always, the fact that our professional reputations as economists were at stake circumscribed what was said - we could not just be political hacks - and encouraged us to work for the adoption of economic policies that were consistent with economic principles.
When the President was re-elected, he asked me to continue to serve as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for another term. But I had already been approached by the World Bank, to be its senior vice president for development policy and its chief economist. America's economic policy had been successfully redefined, and the economy was performing well. There were many problems yet to be addressed, such as putting social security on a sound financial footing, but I was not optimistic about making progress on most of them in the coming years, given the Republican control of Congress. The challenges and the opportunities in the developing world seemed far greater. I had always wanted to return to the problems of development, and though I had had many visits to developing countries in the twenty five years since leaving Kenya, I had not really been immersed in their problems.
I had no strong agenda, other than doing what I could to promote the development of these countries, in ways which did as much as possible to eliminate poverty. But as I quickly became engrossed in the problems of development, a variety of issues surfaced, the most important of which was the intellectual framework with which development was to be pursued. In a recent article in Atlantic Monthly16 I described a trip to Ethiopia, where I saw the IMF advocate policies of financial market liberalization which made no sense, in which it argued that the countries budget was out of balance - when in my estimate that was clearly not the case - and in which it had suspended its program, in spite of that country's first rate macro-economic performance. More broadly, the IMF was advocating a set of policies which is generally referred to alternatively as the Washington consensus, the neo-liberal doctrines, or market fundamentalism, based on an incorrect understanding of economic theory and (what I viewed) as an inadequate interpretation of the historical data. The IMF was using models that failed to incorporate the advances in economic theory of the past twenty five years, including the work on imperfect information and incomplete markets to which I had contributed. Most importantly, they had departed from the mission for which they had been founded, under the intellectual guidance of Keynes - they actually promoted contractionary fiscal policies for countries facing an economic downturn - and they advocated polices like capital market liberalization, for which there was little evidence that growth was promoted, while there was ample evidence that such policies generated instability.
As an academic I was scandalized; as a former adviser to the President who had helped design a "third way" for the United States - a view of the role of government that was markedly different from that envisioned by the Washington consensus - I was particularly disturbed by the role of the US government (or more accurately, the US Treasury) in pushing these views.
If the IMF had only pushed its views - misrepresenting them as the lessons of economic orthodoxy, describing them as if they were Pareto dominant (that is, they were policies which would make everyone better off, so that there were no trade-offs), rather than the policies which reflected the perspectives and interests of particular groups within society - that would have been bad enough. But all too often they used their economic power effectively to force countries to adopt these policies, undermining democratic processes. As someone who had grown up in mid-America, strongly inculcated with democratic values, I found this hard to accept; and even more so because the IMF's own governance was so dissonant with democratic principles (a single country has an effective veto; countries like China were long underrepresented, the "governors" of the IMF, those responsible for its decisions, finance ministers and the heads of the central banks, are hardly representative, and the heads of the central banks themselves are typically not directly democratically accountable).
With the East Asia crisis, my disagreements with the Fund came to a head. The Fund's policies seemed neither to accord with an understanding of the crisis countries (several of which I had studied closely during my East Asia Miracle project) and what I viewed as basic economics, especially as it had come to incorporate concerns about asymmetries of information and bankruptcy, corporate governance and finance, with which I had long been concerned. I argued against their prescriptions, and those within the World Bank broadly agreed. But I made little headway with the Fund. There seemed to be no way out other than to bring the issues out into the public - and since as a democrat, I believed that there should be public discussion of such issues, I had few misgivings. I believe the public pressure that was generated did work; the counterproductive policies of excessive monetary and fiscal stringency were eased.
A third set of controversies was opened up as the World Bank began its ten year review of the transition of the former Communist countries to the market. The failures of the countries that had followed the IMF shock therapy policies - both in terms of the declines in GDP and increases in poverty - were even worse than the worst that most of its critics had envisioned at the onset of the transition. There were clear links between the dismal performances and the particular policies that the IMF had advocated, such as the voucher privatization schemes and excessive monetary stringency. Other failures were related to the inadequate attention given to issues of corporate governance (the importance of which had, for instance, been stressed in my earlier theoretical work (see Stiglitz, 1985a). Meanwhile, the success of a few countries that had followed quite different strategies suggested that there were alternatives that could have been followed. Again, while the IMF defended its previous policies, I believe that the clear lessons that were drawn from these experiences did have some impact on policy prescriptions going forward.
I left the World Bank in January 2000. The US Treasury had put enormous pressure on the World Bank to silence my criticisms of the policies which they and the IMF had pushed, and though the President of the World Bank agreed with the stances I took on most of the issues, he was, I think, less comfortable about open discourse of these issues. I had come to the World Bank under an agreement that I would be more than a corporate spokesperson, that I could speak out on the relevant issues, in a responsible way. I believed, in part, that the credence that would be given to what I said - and my ability to advance the development agenda - depended in part on the perception that I was expressing my views, not just repeating the institution's official views. Under Treasury pressure, it was impossible to maintain this kind of independence, which had been a hallmark of the World Bank's research division, at least from the time that it achieved international prominence under the leadership of Hollis Chenery. I was, in any case, ready to return to academia - when President Clinton had asked me to be his adviser, it had been my intention to come to Washington for only two years; I had stayed seven, and although I had managed in that period to carry out a moderate research program, I had had my fill of bureaucracy. Still, it was a great disappointment to me that my own government should have gone so much against the principles for which I believed it stood, including transparency and the importance of the role of government. (My conversations with the President convinced me that he himself supported both my stances and the values that underlay them, but that the US Treasury often did not adequately inform him about the policies they were advocating, let alone ask for his approval.)
The experiences during the seven years in Washington have helped shape my activities since then. I helped found the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, with support of the Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur, and Mott Foundations and the Canadian and Swedish government, to enhance democratic processes for decision making in developing countries, to ensure that a broader range of alternative are on the table and more stakeholders are at the table. This effort has enlisted the support of dozens of economics and other social scientists throughout the world, in a set of task forces that are intended to lay out alternative policy alternatives in a wide range of areas, and has conducted policy dialogues bringing together academics, government officials, NGO's, labor leaders, and the press in a number of countries, including Serbia, Nigeria, Viet Nam, and the Philippines. Both through the Initiative for Policy Dialogue and independently, I have continued to take an active role advising governments on a broad range of issues, from the role of monetary policy under dollarization (Ecuador) to the reform of social security systems and second and third generation reforms in China, to the lessons that can be drawn from the past failures and successes for privatization, to the design of macro-economic responses to an economic slowdown.
I have also continued to work actively to change the international economic arrangements, including the international institutions, to make them more transparent, to ensure that the policies that they have been pushing reflect the interests and concerns of the developing countries, and especially the poor within those countries, as well as the advances in economic science of the past quarter century. I have been pleased with the progress that has occurred: perspectives, such as greater reliance on bankruptcy and standstills, that I had long advocated have now either been adopted or are at the center of the policy debate. But much remains to be done, and I anticipate that pushing this agenda will occupy much of my time in the years ahead.
My research agenda too has been greatly affected by these experiences. While I have continued the research program on the economics of information - I have recently completed a book with my long time collaborator Bruce Greenwald which explores more fully the implications of information economics for macro-economics, and monetary theory in particular17 - I have turned more of my attention to an analysis of the role of information and incentives in political processes, as well as continuing my work on development more generally. (Stiglitz, 2001c.) Another major area of research involves the continuing analysis of the appropriate role of the state in the economy; in particular, how to design policies which combine concerns for economic efficiency, social justice, individual responsibility, and liberal values.
http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/2001/stiglitz-autobio.html
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