Henry George theorem. Stiglitz made early contributions to a theory of public finance stating that an optimal supply of local public goods can be funded entirely through capture of the land rents generated by those goods (when population distributions are optimal).

As a New Keynesian economist, Stiglitz’ research has contributed to the understanding of how microeconomic phenomena can provide a foundation for macroeconomics. Stiglitz’ research includes groundbreaking work on information asymmetry in many different applications, monopolistic competition, and risk aversion.

Stiglitz answers the question why globalization and world trade has not delivered on its promise of increased well being as much as classical economists thought, by pointing to the power asymmetries: firstly, between industrialized nations and developing nations and secondly, between special corporate interest and …

The problem, according to Stiglitz, is that globalization has not been pushed carefully, or fairly. On the contrary, liberalization policies have been implemented too fast, in the wrong order, and often using inadequate—or plainly wrong—economic analysis.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. Known for his pioneering work on asymmetric information, Stiglitz’s work focuses on income distribution, risk, corporate governance, public policy, macroeconomics and globalization.

Stiglitz explains that globalization could be either success or failure, depending on its management. There is a success when it is managed by national government by embracing their characteristics of each individual country; however, there is a failure when it is managed by international institutions such as IMF.

He believes that capitalism’s excesses can be tamed by the state providing a “public option” in areas like health care or mortgages when the market flounders. As part of The Economist’s Open Future initiative, we conducted a short, written interview with Mr Stiglitz about his ideas.

Michael Spence, (born 1943, Montclair, New Jersey, U.S.), American economist who, with George A. Akerlof and Joseph E. Stiglitz, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 for laying the foundations for the theory of markets with asymmetric information.