Stiglitz Quotes & Sayings

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

I became convinced that the advanced industrial countries, through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank, were not only not doing all that they could to help these [developing] countries but were sometimes making their life more difficult. IMF programs had clearly worsened the East Asian crisis, and the "shock therapy" they had pushed in the former Soviet Union and its satellites played an important role in the failure of the transition. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Wall Street banks have used the same tactic that Bush used in the war on terror - fear - and they've basically said that if you don't do what we tell you, the sky will fall. If you don't do what we tell you, it will be the end of capitalism as we know it. The failure of Lehman Brothers lent some credence to those fears. — Joseph Stiglitz

Climate change is a reality. — Joseph Stiglitz

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

Temporary nationalization of the banks that are in very bad shape would mean basically that the government is the temporary owner. I always believe that the government should focus on its comparative advantages, and banking is not one of them. It should, therefore, if it nationalizes banks, sell them back to the private sector. — Joseph Stiglitz

While it is not always clear what is fair, and people's judgments of fairness can be biased by their self-interest, there is a growing sense that the present disparity in wages is unfair. When executives argue that wages have to be reduced or that there have to be layoffs in order for corporations to compete, but simultaneously increase their own pay, workers rightly consider that what is going on is unfair. That will affect their effort today, their loyalty to the firm, their willingness to cooperate with others, and their willingness to invest in its future. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

The only surprise about the economic crisis of 2008 was that it came as a surprise to so many. — Joseph Stiglitz

The problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion. — Joseph Stiglitz

You can't overestimate what happens when you encourage regulators to believe that the goal of regulation is not to regulate. — Joseph Stiglitz

The only people benefiting in Iraq war are George Bush's Jr. friends in the oil industry. He has done the American economy and the global economy an enormous disfavor, but his Texan friends couldn't be happier. — Joseph Stiglitz

Overborrowing or overlending? Lenders encourage indebtedness because it is profitable. Developing country governments are sometimes even pressured to overborrow ... Even without corruption, it is easy to be influenced by Western businessmen and financiers ... Countries that aren't sure that borrowing is worth the rist are told how important it is to establis a credit rating: borrow even if you really don't need the money. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

World War II was really unusual, because America was in the Great Depression before. So the war did help the US economy to get securely out of this decline. This time, the war [in Iraq] is bad for the economy in both the short and long run. We could have spent trillions in research or education instead. This would have led to future productivity increases. — Joseph Stiglitz

Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist. — Joseph Stiglitz

There is a growing consensus that the European systems have worked better than the American: They have been able to deliver better health care to more people at lower cost. — Joseph Stiglitz

Power - often military power - was at the origin of these inequities. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Unfettered market American-style capitalism doesn't work. Developing countries can't afford that kind of luxury. They just can't afford it. Period. If there's a mistake, they can't afford to put out $2 trillion. — Joseph Stiglitz

Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

But while I loved all of these courses, there was an irresistible attraction of economics. — Joseph Stiglitz

Suppose someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transportation for schoolchildren, and free health care - including heart surgery - for all. You might suspect that a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

The Bush administration has been doing everything it can to hide the huge number of returning veterans who are severely wounded - - 17,000 so far including roughly 20 percent with serious brain and head injuries. Even the estimate of $500 billion ignores the lifetime disability and healthcare costs that taxpayers will have to spend for years to come. — Joseph Stiglitz

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

Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

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

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

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

Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low-income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint. Perhaps most importantly, there is an absence of hope. In these countries, the poor know that their prospects of emerging from poverty, let along making it to the top, are minuscule. This is not something we should be striving for. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing. — Joseph Stiglitz

Loose money and light regulation were a toxic mixture. It exploded. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

In developing countries, lack of infrastructure is a far more serious barrier to trade than tariffs. — Joseph Stiglitz

Decisions were often made because of ideology and politics. As a result many wrong-headed actions were taken, ones that did not solve the problem at hand but that fit with the interests or beliefs of the people in power. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American IOUs. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans - if they ever did, there would be a global financial crisis. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

It is a wonderful and unexpected honor to receive the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Receiving this prize with Joseph Stiglitz and George Akerlof, whose work I have learned from and admired, makes it even more gratifying. — Michael Spence

Democracy, we now know, is more than periodic elections in some countries, such elections have been used to legitimize essentially authoritarian regimes and deprive large parts of the citizenry of basic rights. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

International lending banks need to focus on areas where private investment doesn't go, such as infrastructure projects, education and poverty relief. — Joseph Stiglitz

To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it, for in the process of taking it away, wealth gets destroyed. A monopolist who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the same time destroys value. To get his monopoly price, he has to restrict production. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

We are helping the people that [George W.]Bush says are evil. Teheran couldn't be happier about the high oil prices resulting from the Iraq war. — Joseph Stiglitz

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

I don't think if we had been able to make that choice rationally, we would have said that's what we want to do. We would have said: "Can't we save the banks and solve our health care problems?" The answer is yes. You could have. — Joseph Stiglitz

I understand why political leaders in the beginning want to be cheerleaders to generate optimism. But to admit that they didn't understand the depths of the problem afterwards, I found a little bit surprising. — Joseph Stiglitz

Trickle-down economics is a myth. Enriching corporations - as the TPP would - will not necessarily help those in the middle, let alone those at the bottom. — Joseph Stiglitz

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

The protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. But increasingly, and especially in the US, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote". Rather than correcting the market failures, the political system was reinforcing them. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history-a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it's crucial to get the history straight. — Joseph Stiglitz

As medical care has improved, life expectancy has increased - on average, in the United States, by some two years between 1990 and 2000. But for the poorest group of Americans there has been no progress, and for poor women life expectancy has actually been declining. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there. — Joseph Stiglitz

The military is focusing only on the short run costs. If they don't provide appropriate body armor, they save some money today, but the healthcare cost is going to be the future for some other president down the line. I view that as both fiscally and morally irresponsible. — Joseph Stiglitz

Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education. — Joseph Stiglitz

I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights. — Joseph Stiglitz

If one group's economic opportunities leave it much poorer than other groups, then the interactions of the first group with people from other groups will be limited, and it is likely to develop a different culture. Then ideas about intrinsic differences of the poor group are more likely to take root and to persist. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country's collective efforts over generations. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

(a) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually worse-off today than they were at the beginning of the century. (d) Inequalities in wealth are even greater than inequalities in income. (e) Inequalities are apparent not just in income but in a variety of other variables that reflect standards of living, such as insecurity and health. (f) Life is particularly harsh at the bottom - and the recession made it much worse. (g) There has been a hollowing out of the middle class. (h) There is little income mobility - the notion of America as a land of opportunity is a myth. (i) And America has more inequality than any other advanced industrialized country, it does less to correct these inequities, and inequality is growing more than in many other countries. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

The recovery of the banks is what happens when you reduce competition, lend money to them at zero interest rates, allow them to gamble. That particular style of restoration actually inhibits the economic recovery. — Joseph Stiglitz

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

They [political leaders ] thought the only problem was the banking system, and if they fixed the banking system, all would be fine. But the banking system and the mortgage problem were symptomatic of some deeper problems, and evidently they still haven't recognized those deeper problems. — Joseph Stiglitz

In some circumstances, a focus on extrinsic rewards (money) can actually diminish effort. Most (or at least many) teachers enter their profession not because of the money but because of their love for children and their dedication to teaching. The best teachers could have earned far higher incomes if they had gone to banking. It is almost insulting to assume that they are not doing what they can to help their students learn, and that by paying them an extra $500 or $1,500, they would exert greater effort. Indeed, incentive pay can be corrosive: it reminds teachers of how bad their pay is, and those who are led thereby to focus on money may be induced to find a better paying job, leaving behind only those for whom teaching is the only alternative. (Of course, if teachers perceive themselves to be badly paid, that will undermine morale, and that will have adverse incentive effects) — Joseph E. Stiglitz

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

American inequality didn't just happen. It was created. — Joseph Stiglitz

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

We could have saved Wall Street without putting our future in jeopardy. I predicted that there would be all-around consequences - in the long run as well as in the short run. People are now saying we can't afford health care reform because we spent all the money on the banks. So, in effect, we're saying that it's better that we give rich bankers a couple of trillion than giving ordinary Americans access to health care. — Joseph Stiglitz

I've always been sceptical about the notion that the market is a person you can engage in an argument with, and that that person is an intelligent, rational, well-intentioned person: it is fantasy. We know that ... the market is subject to irrational optimism and pessimism, and is vindictive ... You're dealing with a crazy man ... Having got what he wants he will still kill you. — Joseph Stiglitz

It's actually a tribute to the quality of economics teaching that they have persuaded so many generations of students to believe in so much that seems so counter to what the world is like. Many of the things that I'm going to describe make so much more common sense than these notions that seem counter to what ones eyes see every day. — Joseph Stiglitz

Not everybody is qualified to go to Stanford, but everybody should have access to the best qualify for which they are eligible. — Joseph Stiglitz

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

The only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Active learning is always involved with interaction between teachers and students and Socratic methods and that's gonna continue. — Joseph Stiglitz

The facts shouldn't get in the way of a pleasant fantasy. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

What's worrying is that those in the 1 percent, in attempting to claim for themselves an unjust proportion of the benefits of this system, may be willing to destroy the system itself to hold on to what they have. This — Joseph E. Stiglitz

What most Americans mean when they say "the end of the recession" is, "When will it be back to normal? When can we get jobs? When will the employment rate be back to 4 percent or 5 percent?" — Joseph Stiglitz

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

If the President asked you to help, I don't think anybody could refuse, unless one felt that one couldn't be effective. — Joseph Stiglitz

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

I think that for the developing world there are many versions of capitalism, and countries have to choose one that's appropriate. — Joseph Stiglitz

I trace the inequality to a particular set of decisions that we took when we lowered the tax rate from 91% down to very low levels at the top, where we stripped away regulations. So the result of that was not a more dynamic economy, but a more unequal society. We tried the experiment of trickle-down. A third of a century later, we can say fairly definitively that it was a failure. — Joseph Stiglitz

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently. — Joseph Stiglitz

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

Ensuring that we have a well-informed public citizenry is important for a well-functioning democracy, and that in turn requires an active and diverse media. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

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

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

GDP tells you nothing about sustainability — Joseph Stiglitz

Misguided liberal Joseph Stiglitz.Columbia University professor and Nobel Prize winner, claims the American dream is dead. — Jedediah Bila

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

The powerful try to frame the discussion in a way that benefits their interests, realizing that, in a democracy, they cannot simply impose their rule on others. In one way or another, they have to "co-opt" the rest of society to advance their agenda. Here — Joseph E. Stiglitz

The head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, made it perfectly clear: sophisticated investors don't, or at least shouldn't, rely on trust. Those who bought the products the banks sold were consenting adults who should have known better. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Any society has to delegate the responsibility to maintain a certain kind of order. Enforcing regulations, making sure people stop at stoplights. We can't function as a society without rules and regulations, and the enforcement mechanism of those rules and regulations. — Joseph Stiglitz

The fact that the government had to put up hundreds of billions of dollars to Citibank in guarantees was a public declaration that Citibank was a mess. Making Citibank go through financial restructuring would not have conveyed any more different information. So it's very hard to see why it would have had that kind of a panic if it were done well. — Joseph Stiglitz

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax relief for the wealthy. — Joseph Stiglitz

Privatization, of course, is based on yet another myth: that government-run programs must be inefficient, and privatization accordingly must be better. In fact, as we noted in chapter 6, the transaction costs of Social Security and Medicare are much, much lower than those of private-sector firms providing comparable services. This should not come as a surprise. The objective of the private sector is to make profits - for private companies, transactions costs are a good thing; the difference between what they take in and what they pay out is what they want to maximize.31 — Joseph E. Stiglitz

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy. — Joseph Stiglitz

I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced. — Joseph Stiglitz

The striking thing about America is - it's historically, extraordinary unusual,I don't of any other instance - is that productivity of workers and wages have not moved in tandem. — Joseph Stiglitz

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. — Joseph Stiglitz

The United States was the most unequal of the advanced industrial countries in the mid-1980s, and it has maintained that position.92 In fact, the gap between it and many other countries has increased: from the mid-1980s France, Hungary, and Belgium have seen no significant increase in inequality, while Turkey and Greece have actually seen a decrease in inequality. We are now approaching the level of inequality that marks dysfunctional societies - it is a club that we would distinctly not want to join, including Iran, Jamaica, Uganda, and the Philippines.93 Because we have so much inequality, and — Joseph E. Stiglitz

I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely. — Joseph Stiglitz

Borrowers were told not to worry about paying the ever-mounting debt, because house prices would keep rising and they could refinance, taking out some of the capital gains to buy a car or pay for a vacation. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

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

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

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. — Joseph Stiglitz