Joseph Stiglitz famous quotes

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

#People #Training #Development

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

#Responsibility #Order #People

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

#Focus #Relief #Needs

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

#Should #Stanford #Qualified

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

#Groups #Different #Fundamentals

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

#America #Wages #Unusual

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.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Pay #Information #Return

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

#Teacher #Students #Method

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

#Growing Up #Thinking #Issues

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

#Decision #Levels #Regulation

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

#Country #Parent #Income

Poverty is what we call the extremes at the bottom.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Poverty #Bottom #Extremes

Climate change is a reality.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Reality #Climate #Climate Change

The important lesson of the deficit is - and the national debt - is we have to be careful about how we're spending money.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Important #Debt #Lessons

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

#Hands #Invisible #Reason

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

#Teacher #Responsibility #Guides

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

#Past #Battle #Steps

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

#Art #College #Students

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

#Country #Yield #People

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

#Children #School #Cities

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

#Family #Issues #Political

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

#Intellectual #Mit #Development

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

#Problem #Economics #Ideology

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?
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Efficiency #Stability #Assurance

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

#Running #Wisdom #Results

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

#Air #Firsts #Winner

The budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs the total impact will exceed £20 billion.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#War #Iraq #Impact

But individuals and firms spend an enormous amount of resources acquiring information, which affects their beliefs; and actions of others too affect their beliefs.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Information #Belief #Action

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

#Discrimination #Individual

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

#Brother #Gone #Guidance

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 Stiglitz

#Humanity #Mastery #Elements

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

#Country #Tariffs #Developing Countries

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

#Business #Crazy #Intelligent

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

#Engagement #Shapes #Interest

It is trust, more than money, that makes the world go round.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#World

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 Stiglitz

#Meaningful #Real #Years

Governments can enhance growth by increasing inclusiveness. A country's most valuable resource is its people. So it is essential to ensure that everyone can live up to their potential, which requires educational opportunities for all.
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Country #Educational #Opportunity

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

#Issues #Sides #Debate

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

#Logic #Economic #Periods

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

#Inequality

GDP tells you nothing about sustainability
-- Joseph Stiglitz

#Gdp #Sustainability

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

#Fate #Doctors #House