Joseph Stiglitz

Stiglitz, raised in a Jewish family in the industrial town of Gary, Indiana, became a central figure in the economics of information. He and his co-laureates showed how markets behave when buyers and sellers hold unequal information — 'asymmetric information' — explaining phenomena from credit rationing to why insurance and used-car markets can break down. This work, honored with the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, reshaped economic theory and his influential critiques of globalization.