Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, born in 1943, is an American economist and could be consider as a supporter New Keynesian Economics. In 2001, jointly with George A. Akerlof and Michael Spence, he was awarded the Noble Prize in Economic Sciences for his work regarding analysis in markets with asymmetric information. In 2003 he became a Professor at Columbia University.
Stiglitz paid special attention and studied those situations in which the market agents that are worst informed, manage to extract market information through the use of sampling technics. This was an extension and completion of Spence´s work on signalling, but from the consumer’s point of view. Through different papers and works, such as “Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information”, published in 1981 and co-authored by Andrew Weiss, Stiglitz has analysed and explained that some market phenomena, such as unemployment and credit rationing, are better understood by the existence of asymmetric information.
As a result of the research that Stiglitz carried out involving efficiency wages, he and Carl Shapirodeveloped the Shapiro-Stiglitz model in their article “Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device”, 1984. This model helps explain why unemployment exists, even in equilibrium, and why also, even without minimum wages, wages do not decrease fast enough for everyone to be hired.
Stiglitz was part of the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1997. He also served as senior vice-president and chief economist at the World Bankfrom 1997 to 2000.