03/09/93
CONTACT: Stanford University News Service (650) 723-2558
STANFORD --President Clinton has asked Stanford University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz to serve on his Council of Economic Advisers, the White House has announced.
A formal appointment to the council requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate. President Clinton nominated economist Laura D'Andrea Tyson of the University of California-Berkeley as the council's chairwoman, and the third member of the council is expected to be Alan Blinder, a Princeton University economist.
Stiglitz, 50, is the Joan Kenney Professor of Economics at Stanford, the endowed chair previously held by Nobelist Kenneth Arrow. Stiglitz also is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Institute for Policy Reform in Washington, D.C., and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
He is the author of leading textbooks in the areas of public finance and introductory economics. His new textbook, Economics: Principles for the Next Generation, has been described as the first major update of basic economics texts since Paul Samuelson introduced Keynesian analysis in 1947.
"Joe Stiglitz is one of the world's leading economic theorists and one of the world's most versatile policy economists as well. Our department takes great pride in his appointment," said Gavin Wright, chair of Stanford's economics department. Wright said Stiglitz was granted a leave from Stanford, where he taught introductory economics winter quarter.
"Contemporary economic theory is crisscrossed with his footprints," the American Economic Association said of Stiglitz in 1979 when awarding him its prestigious John Bates Clark Award, given every two years to the nation's best economist under the age of 40. The association noted Stiglitz's theoretical contributions to the understanding of growth and capital, the economics of discrimination, public finance, corporate finance, information, uncertainty, competitive equilibrium with exhaustible resources, monopolistic competition and product diversity.
Stiglitz is widely known as an originator of the "economics of information" and as an author of textbooks that have been translated into many languages. His latest introductory text attempts to integrate general macro- and micro-economic principles to current policy concerns such as American competitiveness, technological change, the international capital market and problems of unemployment, inflation and growth.
He has done research for Stanford's Center for Economic Policy Research on such subjects as incentive shortcomings in federal savings- and-loan regulation and work for the Institute for Policy Reform on international economics. He has lectured widely internationally.
"Broadly speaking, Joe's theoretical work has had to do with the shortcomings and imperfections of market economy, not from the standpoint of a thorough-going rejection of the market economy but from the perspective that holds out hope for improvement through government regulation or use of the tax system," Wright said.
Stiglitz is founding editor of the American Economic Association's Journal of Economic Perspectives, which was created in part to make economic ideas more accessible and relevant to those outside the field. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society.
Born in Gary, Ind., Stiglitz received a bachelor's degree from Amherst and a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began his teaching career at MIT in 1966 and became a full professor at Yale in 1969, at the age of 26. He also has been a member of the faculties of Princeton and Oxford universities. A member of the Stanford faculty from 1974 to 1976, he returned in 1988. He is married to Jane Hannaway, an associate professor in the Stanford School of Education.
During the Bush administration, Stanford economist Michael Boskin chaired the President's Council of Economic Advisers and his Stanford colleague John Taylor served as a council member. The council provides the president with a broad range of economic advice, helping to formulate national economic policy.
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