Frasi di Joseph Stiglitz

„Questa crisi, questo disastro [europeo] è artificiale […] e in sostanza questo disastro artificiale ha quattro lettere: l'euro.“

—  Joseph Stiglitz

„Il reddito è solo una dimensione della disuguaglianza. Altre dimensioni sono molto importanti, come ad esempio l'accesso alla giustizia, che non è uguale per tutti, o la partecipazione alle decisioni politiche, che non è la stessa per tutti. Tali dimensioni, però, sono difficili da quantificare. Ci sono invece almeno altre due dimensioni che sono facili da misurare. Una è la disuguaglianza nella salute, come risulta dalle differenze nell’aspettativa di vita. La natura stessa porta alcuni individui a vivere più a lungo di altri. Ma se alcuni individui non hanno accesso all’assistenza sanitaria o non riescono ad ottenere un’alimentazione adeguata, allora ci saranno ancora maggiori disparità nella salute.“

—  Joseph Stiglitz

„L'aumento della finanziarizzazione dell'economia, combinata con una governance aziendale più debole e una vera e propria diffusa turpitudine morale, hanno portato ad una situazione in cui molti, nel settore finanziario, sfruttano il resto dell’economia.“

—  Joseph Stiglitz

„Dobbiamo riscrivere le regole dell'economia di mercato, ancora una volta, fare di meglio per ridurre il potere di mercato monopolistico, l'esclusione e la discriminazione; garantendo una minore trasmissione intergenerazionale dei vantaggi acquisiti, inclusa una minore trasmissione intergenerazionale del capitale umano e finanziario, in parte migliorando l'istruzione pubblica, aumentando la tassazione sull'eredità e reintroducendo una progressività maggiore nelle imposte sul reddito.“

—  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

„The theories that I (and others) helped develop explained why unfettered markets often not only do not lead to social justice, but do not even produce efficient outcomes. Interestingly, there has been no intellectual challenge to the refutation of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: individuals and firms, in the pursuit of their self-interest, are not necessarily, or in general, led as if by an invisible hand, to economic efficiency. The only question that has been raised concerns the ability of government to remedy the deficiencies of the market. Within academia, a significant fraction of economists are involved with developing and expanding on the ideas of imperfect information (and imperfect markets) that I explored. For instance, Edmund Phelps, this year’s Nobel Prize winner, belongs to this "school" of thought. But in political discourse, simplistic “market fundamentalism” continues to exert enormous influence.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

Interview on Bebbe Grillo's Blog http://www.beppegrillo.it/eng/2007/01/stiglitz.html, January 2007.

„Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz, libro Making Globalization Work

Origine: Making Globalization Work

„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… 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 E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

„My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

„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 E. Stiglitz

Economics (1993).

„1. The standard neoclassical model the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand, the contention that market economies will ensure economic efficiency provides little guidance for the choice of economic systems, since once information imperfections (and the fact that markets are incomplete) are brought into the analysis, as surely they must be, there is no presumption that markets are efficient.
2. The Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem, asserting the equivalence of market and market socialist economies, is based on a misguided view of the market, of the central problems of resource allocation, and (not surprisingly, given the first two failures) of how the market addresses those basic problems.
3. The neoclassical paradigm, through its incorrect characterization of the market economies and the central problems of resource allocation, provides a false sense of belief in the ability of market socialism to solve those resource allocation problems. To put it another way, if the neoclassical paradigm had provided a good description of the resource allocation problem and the market mechanism, then market socialism might well have been a success. The very criticisms of market socialism are themselves, to a large extent, criticisms of the neoclassical paradigm.
4. The central economic issues go beyond the traditional three questions posed at the beginning of every introductory text: What is to be produced? How is it to be produced? And for whom is it to be produced? Among the broader set of questions are: How should these resource allocation decisions be made? Who should make these decisions? How can those who are responsible for making these decisions be induced to make the right decisions? How are they to know what and how much information to acquire before making the decisions? How can the separate decisions of the millions of actors decision makers in the economy be coordinated?
5. At the core of the success of market economies are competition, markets, and decentralization. It is possible to have these, and for the government to still play a large role in the economy; indeed it may be necessary for the government to play a large role if competition is to be preserved. There has recently been extensive confusion over to what to attribute the East Asian miracle, the amazingly rapid growth in countries of this region during the past decade or two. Countries like Korea did make use of markets; they were very export oriented. And because markets played such an important role, some observers concluded that their success was convincing evidence of the power of markets alone. Yet in almost every case, government played a major role in these economies. While Wade may have put it too strongly when he entitled his book on the Taiwan success Governing the Market, there is little doubt that government intervened in the economy through the market.
6. At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could "solve" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz, libro Whither Socialism?

Origine: Whither Socialism? (1994), Ch. 1 : The Theory of Socialism and the Power of Economic Ideas

„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).“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

„The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

Quoted in Daniel Altman, "Managing Globalization: Q & A with Joseph Stiglitz" http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/globalization/?p=177, The International Herald Tribune (2006-10-11).

„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.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

„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.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

„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 E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

„There is little doubt that the observation that quality may depend on price (productivity on wages; default probability on interest rates) has provided a rich mine for economic theorists: A simple modification of the basic assumptions results in a profound alteration of many of the basic conclusions of the standard paradigm. The Law of Supply and Demand has been repealed. The Law of the Single Price has been repealed. The Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics has been shown not to be valid.
More than that, the theories that we describe here provide the basis of progress toward a unification of macroeconomics and microeconomics. They pro vide an explanation of unemployment and credit rationing, derived from basic microeconomic principles. It is a theory in which the extensive idleness that periodically confronts society's resources, human and capital, is seen as but the most obvious example of market failures that prevasively and persistently distort the allocation of resources.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

"The Causes and Consequences of The Dependence of Quality on Price", Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Mar., 1987)

„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.“

—  Joseph E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)

„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 E. Stiglitz

Autobiographical Essay (2001)