Intellectual property (IP) is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of rights are recognized under the corresponding fields of law.^[1] Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property rights include copyrights, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights and trade secrets in some jurisdictions.

Although many of the legal principles governing intellectual property have evolved over centuries, it was not until the 19th century that the term intellectual property began to be used, and not until the late 20th century that it became commonplace in the majority of the world.^[2] The British Statute of Anne 1710 and the Statute of Monopolies 1623 are now seen as the origins of copyright and patent law respectively.^[3]

History[link]

The Statute of Anne came into force in 1710

Modern usage of the term intellectual property goes back at least as far as 1867 with the founding of the North German Confederation whose constitution granted legislative power over the protection of intellectual property (Schutz des geistigen Eigentums) to the confederation.^[4] When the administrative secretariats established by the Paris Convention (1883) and the Berne Convention (1886) merged in 1893, they located in Berne, and also adopted the term intellectual property in their new combined title, the United International Bureaux for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The organisation subsequently relocated to Geneva in 1960, and was succeeded in 1967 with the establishment of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by treaty as an agency of the United Nations. According to Lemley, it was only at this point that the term really began to be used in the United States (which had not been a party to the Berne Convention),^[2] and it did not enter popular usage until passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.^[5]

"The history of patents does not begin with inventions, but rather with royal grants by Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) for monopoly privileges... Approximately 200 years after the end of Elizabeth's reign, however, a patent represents a legal [right] obtained by an inventor providing for exclusive control over the production and sale of his mechanical or scientific invention... [demonstrating] the evolution of patents from royal prerogative to common-law doctrine."^[6]

In an 1818 collection of his writings, the French liberal theorist, Benjamin Constant, argued against the recently introduced idea of "property which has been called intellectual."^[7] The term intellectual property can be found used in an October 1845 Massachusetts Circuit Court ruling in the patent case Davoll et al. v. Brown., in which Justice Charles L. Woodbury wrote that "only in this way can we protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests are as much a man's own...as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears."^[8] The statement that "discoveries are...property" goes back earlier. Section 1 of the French law of 1791 stated, "All new discoveries are the property of the author; to assure the inventor the property and temporary enjoyment of his discovery, there shall be delivered to him a patent for five, ten or fifteen years."^[9] In Europe, French author A. Nion mentioned propriété intellectuelle in his Droits civils des auteurs, artistes et inventeurs, published in 1846.

Until recently, the purpose of intellectual property law was to give as little protection possible in order to encourage innovation. Historically, therefore, they were granted only when they were necessary to encourage invention, limited in time and scope.^[10]

The concept's origins can potentially be traced back further. Jewish law includes several considerations whose effects are similar to those of modern intellectual property laws, though the notion of intellectual creations as property does not seem to exist – notably the principle of Hasagat Ge'vul (unfair encroachment) was used to justify limited-term publisher (but not author) copyright in the 16th century.^[11]

Objectives[link]

Currently, particularly in the United States, the objective of intellectual property legislators and those who support its implementation is "absolute protection". "If some intellectual property is desirable because it encourages innovation, they reason, more is better. The thinking is that creators will not have sufficient incentive to invent unless they are legally entitled to capture the full social value of their inventions." ^[12] This absolute protection or full value view treats intellectual property as another type of 'real' property, typically adopting its law and rhetoric.

Financial incentive[link]

These exclusive rights allow owners of intellectual property to benefit from the property they have created, providing a financial incentive for the creation of an investment in intellectual property, and, in case of patents, pay associated research and development costs.^[13] Some commentators, such as David Levine and Michele Boldrin, dispute this justification.^[14]

Economic growth[link]

The WIPO treaty and several related international agreements are premised on the notion that the protection of intellectual property rights are essential to maintaining economic growth. The WIPO Intellectual Property Handbook gives two reasons for intellectual property laws:

One is to give statutory expression to the moral and economic rights of creators in their creations and the rights of the public in access to those creations. The second is to promote, as a deliberate act of Government policy, creativity and the dissemination and application of its results and to encourage fair trading which would contribute to economic and social development.^[15]

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) states that "effective enforcement of intellectual property rights is critical to sustaining economic growth across all industries and globally".^[16]

Economists estimate that two-thirds of the value of large businesses in the U.S. can be traced to intangible assets.^[17] "IP-intensive industries" are estimated to generate 72 percent more value added (price minus material cost) per employee than "non-IP-intensive industries".^{[18][dubious – discuss]}

A joint research project of the WIPO and the United Nations University measuring the impact of IP systems on six Asian countries found "a positive correlation between the strengthening of the IP system and subsequent economic growth."^[19]

Economists have also shown that IP can be a disincentive to innovation when that innovation is drastic. IP makes excludable non-rival intellectual products that were previously non-excludable. This creates economic inefficiency as long as the monopoly is held. A disincentive to direct resources toward innovation can occur when monopoly profits are less than the overall welfare improvement to society. This situation can be seen as a market failure, and an issue of appropriability.^[20]

Morality[link]

According to Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author".^[21] Although the relationship between intellectual property and human rights is a complex one,^[22] there are moral arguments for intellectual property.

The arguments that justify intellectual property fall into three major categories. Personality theorists believe intellectual property is an extension of an individual. Utilitarians believe that intellectual property stimulates social progress and pushes people to further innovation. Lokeans argue that intellectual property is justified based on deservedness and hard work.

Various moral justifications for private property can be used to argue in favor of the morality of intellectual property, such as:

1. Natural Rights/Justice Argument: this argument is based on Locke’s idea that a person has a natural right over the labour and/or products which is produced by his/her body. Appropriating these products is viewed as unjust. Although Locke had never explicitly stated that natural right applied to products of the mind,^[23] it is possible to apply his argument to intellectual property rights, in which it would be unjust for people to misuse another's ideas.^[24] Lokeans argument for intellectual property is based upon the idea that laborers have the right to control that which they create. They argue that we own our bodies which are the laborers, this right of ownership extends to what we create. Thus, intellectual property ensures this right when it comes to production.
2. Utilitarian-Pragmatic Argument: according to this rationale, a society that protects private property is more effective and prosperous than societies that do not. Innovation and invention in 19th century America has been said to be attributed to the development of the patent system.^[25] By providing innovators with "durable and tangible return on their investment of time, labor, and other resources", intellectual property rights seek to maximize social utility.^[26] The presumption is that they promote public welfare by encouraging the "creation, production, and distribution of intellectual works".^[27] Utilitarians argue that without intellectual property there would be a lack of incentive to produce new idea. Systems of protection such as Intellectual property optimize social utility.
3. "Personality" Argument: this argument is based on a quote from Hegel: "Every man has the right to turn his will upon a thing or make the thing an object of his will, that is to say, to set aside the mere thing and recreate it as his own".^[28] European intellectual property law is shaped by this notion that ideas are an "extension of oneself and of one’s personality".^[29] Personality theorists argue that by being a creator of something one is inherently at risk and vulnerable for having their ideas and designs stolen and/or altered. Intellectual property protects these moral claims that have to do with personality.

Writer Ayn Rand has argued that the protection of intellectual property is essentially a moral issue. The belief is that the human mind itself is the source of wealth and survival and that all property at its base is intellectual property. To violate intellectual property is therefore no different morally than violating other property rights which compromises the very processes of survival and therefore constitutes an immoral act.^[30]

Criticism[link]

"Copying is not theft!" badge with a character resembling Mickey Mouse is a visual pun on Mickey as a symbol of the whole intellectual property industry^{[clarification needed]} and its attitude towards copying.^{[citation needed]}

The term itself[link]

Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman argues that, although the term intellectual property is in wide use, it should be rejected altogether, because it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion." He claims that the term "operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws [which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues" and that it creates a "bias" by confusing these monopolies with ownership of limited physical things, likening them to "property rights".^[31] Stallman advocates referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks in the singular and warns against abstracting disparate laws into a collective term.

Lawrence Lessig, along with many other copyleft and free software activists, have criticized the implied analogy with physical property (like land or an automobile). They argue such an analogy fails because physical property is generally rivalrous while intellectual works are non-rivalrous (that is, if one makes a copy of a work, the enjoyment of the copy does not prevent enjoyment of the original).^[32]

Limitations[link]

Some critics of intellectual property, such as those in the free culture movement, point at intellectual monopolies as harming health, preventing progress, and benefiting concentrated interests to the detriment of the masses,^[33][34] and argue that the public interest is harmed by ever expansive monopolies in the form of copyright extensions, software patents and business method patents.

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes that "conflicts may exist between the respect for and implementation of current intellectual property systems and other human rights".^[35] It argues that intellectual property tends to be governed by economic goals when it should be viewed primarily as a social product; in order to serve human well-being, intellectual property systems must respect and conform to human rights laws. According to the Committee, when systems fail to do so they risk infringing upon the human right to food and health, and to cultural participation and scientific benefits.^[36]

Some libertarian critics of intellectual property have argued that allowing property rights in ideas and information creates artificial scarcity and infringes on the right to own tangible property. Stephan Kinsella uses the following scenario to argue this point:

[I]magine the time when men lived in caves. One bright guy—let's call him Galt-Magnon—decides to build a log cabin on an open field, near his crops. To be sure, this is a good idea, and others notice it. They naturally imitate Galt-Magnon, and they start building their own cabins. But the first man to invent a house, according to IP advocates, would have a right to prevent others from building houses on their own land, with their own logs, or to charge them a fee if they do build houses. It is plain that the innovator in these examples becomes a partial owner of the tangible property (e.g., land and logs) of others, due not to first occupation and use of that property (for it is already owned), but due to his coming up with an idea. Clearly, this rule flies in the face of the first-user homesteading rule, arbitrarily and groundlessly overriding the very homesteading rule that is at the foundation of all property rights.^[37]

Other criticism of intellectual property law concerns the tendency of the protections of intellectual property to expand, both in duration and in scope. The trend has been toward longer copyright protection^[38] (raising fears that it may some day be eternal).^{[32][39][40][41]} In addition, the developers and controllers of items of intellectual property have sought to bring more items under the protection. Patents have been granted for living organisms,^[42] (and in the US, certain living organisms have been patentable for over a century)^[43] and colors have been trademarked.^[44] Because they are systems of government-granted monopolies copyrights, patents, and trademarks are called intellectual monopoly privileges, (IMP) a topic on which several academics, including Birgitte Andersen^[45] and Thomas Alured Faunce^[46] have written.

Thomas Jefferson once said in a letter to Isaac McPherson on August 13, 1813:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."^[47]

In 2005 the RSA launched the Adelphi Charter, aimed at creating an international policy statement to frame how governments should make balanced intellectual property law.

Another limitation of current U.S. Intellectual Property legislation is its focus on individual and joint works; thus, copyright protection can only be obtained in 'original' works of authorship.^[48] This definition excludes any works that are the result of community creativity, for example Native American songs and stories; current legislation does not recognize the uniqueness of indigenous cultural 'property' and its ever-changing nature. Simply asking native cultures to 'write down' their cultural artifacts on tangible mediums ignores their necessary orality and enforces a Western bias of the written form as more authoritative.

Ethics[link]

The ethical problems brought up by intellectual property rights are most pertinent when it is socially valuable goods like life-saving medicines and genetically modified seeds that are given intellectual property protection. For example, pharmaceutical companies that produce, apply^{[clarification needed]} intellectual property rights in order to prevent other companies from manufacturing their product without the additional cost of research and development. The application of intellectual property rights allow companies to charge higher than the marginal cost of production in order to recoup the costs of research and development.^[49] However, this immediately excludes from the market anyone who cannot afford the cost of the product, in this case a life saving drug.

See also[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Intellectual property

• Outline of intellectual property
• Information policy

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Intellectual property entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Joseph Stiglitz ForMemRS FBA
17th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors
In office June 28, 1995 – February 13, 1997
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Laura Tyson
Succeeded by	Janet Yellen
World Bank Chief Economist
In office 1997–2000
Preceded by	Michael Bruno
Succeeded by	Nicholas Stern
Personal details
Born	(1943-02-09) February 9, 1943 (age 69) Gary, Indiana
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Anya Schiffrin
Alma mater	Amherst College Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Profession	Economist

Joseph Eugene Stiglitz, ForMemRS, FBA, (born February 9, 1943) is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is also the former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He is known for his critical view of the management of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has been a University Professor since 2003. He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is an honorary doctor of Durham Business School,^[1] an honorary doctor at the Charles University, an honorary professor at Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management and a member of the Executive and Supervisory Committee (ESC)^[2] of CERGE-EI in Prague. Stiglitz is one of the most frequently cited economists in the world.^[3]

Biography[link]

Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana, to Jewish parents, Charlotte and Nathaniel Stiglitz. From 1960 to 1963, he studied at Amherst College, where he was a highly active member of the debate team and President of the Student Government. He went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his fourth year as an undergraduate, where he later pursued graduate work. His undergraduate degree was awarded from Amherst College. From 1965 to 1966, he moved to the University of Chicago to do research under Hirofumi Uzawa who had received an NSF grant. He studied for his PhD from MIT from 1966 to 1967, during which time he also held an MIT assistant professorship. Stiglitz stated that the particular style of MIT economics suited him well - simple and concrete models, directed at answering important and relevant questions.^[4] From 1966 to 1970 he was a research fellow at the University of Cambridge: he arrived at Fitzwilliam House as a Fulbright Scholar in 1965 and then won a Tapp Junior Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College.^[5] In subsequent years, he held academic positions at Yale, Stanford, Duke, Oxford, and Princeton.^[6] Stiglitz is now a Professor at Columbia University, with appointments at the Business School, the Department of Economics and the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and is editor of The Economists' Voice journal with J. Bradford DeLong and Aaron Edlin. He also gives classes for a double-degree program between Sciences Po Paris and École Polytechnique in 'Economics and Public Policy'. As of 2005 he chairs The Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester.^[7][8] Stiglitz is a New-Keynesian economist.^[9][10]

In addition to making numerous influential contributions to microeconomics, Stiglitz has played a number of policy roles. He served in the Clinton Administration as the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1995 – 1997). At the World Bank, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist (1997 – 2000), in the time when unprecedented protest against international economic organizations started, most prominently with the Seattle WTO meeting of 1999. He was fired by the World Bank for expressing dissent with its policies.^[11] He was a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He is a member of Collegium International, an organization of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just and an economically sustainable world. He is also a member of the scientific committee of the Fundacion IDEAS, a Spanish think tank.^[12]

Stiglitz has advised American President Barack Obama, but has also been sharply critical of the Obama Administration's financial-industry rescue plan.^[13] Stiglitz said that whoever designed the Obama administration's bank rescue plan is "either in the pocket of the banks or they’re incompetent."^[14]

In October 2008 he was asked by the President of UN's General Assembly to chair a commission entrusted with drafting a report on the reasons for and solutions to the financial crisis.^[15] In response, the commission produced the Stiglitz Report.

On July 25, 2011, Stiglitz participated to the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid (Spain) expressing his support to the 2011 Spanish protests.^[16]

In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine on its list of top global thinkers.^[17]

Contributions to economics[link]

Stiglitz at a conference in Mexico in 2009.

Information asymmetry[link]

This section cites its sources but does not provide page references. You can help to improve it by introducing citations that are more precise.

Stiglitz's most famous research was on screening, a technique used by one economic agent to extract otherwise private information from another. It was for this contribution to the theory of information asymmetry that he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics^[4] in 2001 "for laying the foundations for the theory of markets with asymmetric information" with George A. Akerlof and A. Michael Spence.

Before the advent of models of imperfect and asymmetric information, the traditional neoclassical economics literature had assumed that markets are efficient except for some limited and well defined market failures. More recent work by Stiglitz and others reversed that presumption, to assert that it is only under exceptional circumstances that markets are efficient. Stiglitz has shown (together with Bruce Greenwald) that "whenever markets are incomplete and/or information is imperfect (which are true in virtually all economies), even competitive market allocation is not constrained Pareto efficient". In other words, they addressed "the problem of determining when tax interventions are Pareto-improving. The approach indicates that such tax interventions almost always exist and that equilibria in situations of imperfect information are rarely constrained Pareto optima."^{[18]:229, abstract} Although these conclusions and the pervasiveness of market failures do not necessarily warrant the state intervening broadly in the economy, it makes clear that the "optimal" range of government recommendable interventions is definitely much larger than the traditional "market failure" school recognizes.^[19] For Stiglitz, there is no such thing as an invisible hand.^[20] According to Stiglitz:^[21]

Whenever there are "externalities"—where the actions of an individual have impacts on others for which they do not pay or for which they are not compensated—markets will not work well. But recent research has shown that these externalities are pervasive, whenever there is imperfect information or imperfect risk markets—that is always. The real debate today is about finding the right balance between the market and government. Both are needed. They can each complement each other. This balance will differ from time to time and place to place.

In the opening remarks for his prize acceptance "Aula Magna",^[22] Stiglitz said:^[23]

I hope to show that Information Economics represents a fundamental change in the prevailing paradigm within economics. Problems of information are central to understanding not only market economics but also political economy, and in the last section of this lecture, I explore some of the implications of information imperfections for political processes.

In an interview in 2007, Stiglitz explained further:^[24]

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.

Efficiency wages: the Shapiro-Stiglitz model[link]

In the Shapiro-Stiglitz model of efficiency wages, workers are paid at a level that dissuades shirking. This prevents wages from dropping to market clearing levels. Full employment cannot be achieved because workers would shirk if they were not threatened with the possibility of unemployment. Because of this, the curve for the no-shirking condition (labeled NSC) goes to infinity at full employment.

Stiglitz also did research on efficiency wages, and helped create what became known as the "Shapiro-Stiglitz model" to explain why there is unemployment even in equilibrium, why wages are not bid down sufficiently by job seekers (in the absence of minimum wages) so that everyone who wants a job finds one, and to question whether the neoclassical paradigm could explain involuntary unemployment.^[25] The answer to these puzzles was proposed by Shapiro and Stiglitz in 1984: "Unemployment is driven by the information structure of employment".^[25] Two basic observations undergird their analysis:

1. Unlike other forms of capital, humans can choose their level of effort.
2. It is costly for firms to determine how much effort workers are exerting.

A full description of this model can be found at the links provided.^[26] Some key implications of this model are:

1. Wages do not fall enough during recessions to prevent unemployment from rising. If the demand for labour falls, this lowers wages. But because wages have fallen, the probability of 'shirking' (workers not exerting effort) has risen. If employment levels are to be maintained, through a sufficient lowering of wages, workers will be less productive than before through the shirking effect. As a consequence, in the model wages do not fall enough to maintain employment levels at the previous state, because firms want to avoid excessive shirking by their workers. So, unemployment must rise during recessions, because wages are kept 'too high'.
2. Possible corollary: Wage sluggishness. Moving from one private cost of hiring <w∗> to another private cost of hiring <w∗∗> will require each firm to repeatedly re-optimize wages in response to shifting unemployment rate. Firms cannot cut wages until unemployment rises sufficiently (a coordination problem).

The outcome is never Pareto efficient.

1. Each firm employs too few workers because it faces private cost of hiring rather than the social cost — which is equal to and in all cases. This means that firms do not "internalize" the "external" cost of unemployment - they do not factor how large-scale unemployment harms society when assessing their own costs. This leads to a negative externality as marginal social cost exceeds the firm's marginal cost (MSC = Firm's Private Marginal Cost + Marginal External Cost of increased social unemployment)^{[clarification needed]}
2. There are also negative externalities. Each firm increases the asset value of unemployment <Vu> for all other firms by hiring.^{[clarification needed]} But the first problem clearly dominates since the 'natural rate of unemployment' is always too high.

Some possible practical implications of Stiglitz theorems[link]

While the mathematical validity of Stiglitz et al. theorems are not in question, their practical implications in political economy and their application in real life economic policies have been subject to considerable disagreement and debate.^[27] Stiglitz himself seems to be continuously adapting his own political-economic discourse,^[28] as we can see from the evolution in his positions as initially stated in Whither Socialism? (1994) to his own new positions held on his most recent publications.

Once incomplete and imperfect information are introduced, Chicago-school defenders of the market system cannot sustain descriptive claims of the Pareto efficiency of the real world. Thus, Stiglitz's use of rational-expectations equilibrium assumptions to achieve a more realistic understanding of capitalism than is usual among rational-expectations theorists leads, paradoxically, to the conclusion that capitalism deviates from the model in a way that justifies state action—socialism—as a remedy.^[29]

The effect of Stiglitz's influence is to make economics even more presumptively interventionist than Samuelson preferred. Samuelson treated market failure as the exception to the general rule of efficient markets. But the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem posits market failure as the norm, establishing "that government could potentially almost always improve upon the market's resource allocation." And the Sappington-Stiglitz theorem "establishes that an ideal government could do better running an enterprise itself than it could through privatization"^[30] (Stiglitz 1994, 179).^[29]

The objections to the wide adoption of these positions suggested by Stiglitz's discoveries do not come from economics itself but mostly from political scientists and are in the fields of sociology. As David L. Prychitko discusses in his "critique" to Whither Socialism? (see below), although Stiglitz's main economic insight seems generally correct, it still leaves open great constitutional questions such as how the coercive institutions of the government should be constrained and what the relation is between the government and civil society.^[31]

Government[link]

Clinton administration, 1993–1997[link]

Stiglitz joined the Clinton Administration in 1993,^[32] serving first as a member during 1993-1995, and then appointed Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers on June 28, 1995, in which capacity he also served as a member of the cabinet. He became deeply involved in environmental issues, which included serving on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and helping draft a new law for toxic wastes (which was never passed).

Stiglitz's most important contribution in this period was helping define a new economic philosophy, a "third way", which postulated the important, but limited, role of government, that unfettered markets often did not work well, but that government was not always able to correct the limitations of markets. The academic research that he had been conducting over the preceding 25 years provided the intellectual foundations for this "third way".

When President Bill Clinton was re-elected, he asked Stiglitz to continue to serve as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for another term. But he had already been approached by the World Bank to be its senior vice president for development policy and its chief economist, and he assumed that position after his CEA successor was confirmed on February 13, 1997.

As the World Bank began its ten-year review of the transition of the former Communist countries to the market economy it unveiled failures of the countries that had followed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shock therapy policies - both in terms of the declines in GDP and increases in poverty - that were even worse than the worst that most of its critics had envisioned at the onset of the transition. Clear links existed between the dismal performances and the policies that the IMF had advocated, such as the voucher privatization schemes and excessive monetary stringency. Meanwhile, the success of a few countries that had followed quite different strategies suggested that there were alternatives that could have been followed. The U.S. Treasury had put enormous pressure on the World Bank to silence his criticisms of the policies which they and the IMF had pursued.^[33][34]

Stiglitz always had a poor relationship with Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.^[35] In 2000, Summers successfully petitioned for Stiglitz's removal, supposedly in exchange for World Bank President James Wolfensohn's re-appointment – an exchange that Wolfensohn denies took place. Whether Summers ever made such a blunt demand is questionable – Wolfensohn claims he would "have told him to fuck himself".^[36]

Stiglitz resigned from the World Bank in January 2000, a month before his term expired.^[34] The Bank's president, James Wolfensohn, announced Stiglitz's resignation in November 1999 and also announced that Stiglitz would stay on as "special advisor to the president", and would chair the search committee for a successor.

"Joseph E. Stiglitz said today [Nov. 24, 1999] that he would resign as the World Bank's chief economist after using the position for nearly three years to raise pointed questions about the effectiveness of conventional approaches to helping poor countries."^[37]

In this role, he continued criticism of the IMF, and, by implication, the US Treasury Department. In April 2000, in an article for The New Republic, he wrote:

"They’ll say the IMF is arrogant. They’ll say the IMF doesn’t really listen to the developing countries it is supposed to help. They’ll say the IMF is secretive and insulated from democratic accountability. They’ll say the IMF's economic ‘remedies’ often make things worse – turning slowdowns into recessions and recessions into depressions. And they’ll have a point. I was chief economist at the World Bank from 1996 until last November, during the gravest global economic crisis in a half-century. I saw how the IMF, in tandem with the U.S. Treasury Department, responded. And I was appalled."

The article was published a week before the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF and provoked a strong response. It proved too strong for Summers and, yet more lethally, Stiglitz's protector-of-sorts at the World Bank, Wolfensohn. Wolfensohn had privately empathised with Stiglitz's views, but this time was worried for his second term, which Summers had threatened to veto.^{[citation needed]} Stanley Fisher, deputy managing director of the IMF, called a special staff meeting and informed at that gathering that Wolfensohn had agreed to fire Stiglitz. Meanwhile, the Bank's External Affairs department told the press that Stiglitz had not been fired, his post had merely been abolished.^[38]

In a September 19, 2008 radio interview with Aimee Allison and Philip Maldari on Pacifica Radio's KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley, California, Stiglitz implied that President Clinton and his economic advisors would not have backed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had they been aware of stealth provisions, inserted by lobbyists, that they overlooked.

Initiative for Policy Dialogue[link]

In July 2000 Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), with support of the Ford, Rockefeller, McArthur, and Mott Foundations and the Canadian and Swedish governments, to enhance democratic processes for decision-making in developing countries and to ensure that a broader range of alternatives are on the table and more stakeholders are at the table.

Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress[link]

At the beginning of 2008, Stiglitz chaired the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, also known as the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission, initiated by President Sarkozy of France. The Commission held its first plenary meeting on 22–23 April 2008 in Paris. Its final report was made public on 14 September 2009.^[39]

Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System[link]

Stiglitz at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, 2009.

In 2009, Stiglitz chaired the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System which was convened by the President of the United Nations General Assembly "to review the workings of the global financial system, including major bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF, and to suggest steps to be taken by Member States to secure a more sustainable and just global economic order".^[40] Its final report was released on 21 September 2009.^[41][42]

Eurozone crisis[link]

During a 2010 BBC interview, Stiglitz argued that Europe should make a clear statement of belief in social solidarity and that they should 'stand behind Greece'.^{[citation needed]}

In 2012, Stiglitz described the European austerity plans as a "suicide-pact."^[43]

Support to the 2011 Spanish Protests[link]

On July 25, 2011, Stiglitz participated to the "I Foro Social del 15M" organized in Madrid (Spain) expressing his support to the 2011 Spanish protests.^[16] During an informal speech, he made a brief review of some of the problems in Europe and in the United States, the serious unemployment rate and the situation in Greece. "This is an opportunity for economic contribution social measures", argued Stiglitz, who made a critical speech about the way authorities are handling the political exit to the crisis. He encouraged those present to respond to the "bad ideas", not with indifference, but with "good ideas". "This does not work, you have to change it", he said.

Criticism of rating agencies[link]

Stiglitz has been critical of rating agencies describing them as the "key culprit" in the financial crisis noting "they were the party that performed the alchemy that converted the securities from F-rated to A-rated. The banks could not have done what they did without the complicity of the rating agencies."^[44]

Books[link]

Along with his technical economic publications (he has published over 300 technical articles), Stiglitz is the author of books on issues from patent law to abuses in international trade.

[edit] Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (2010)

In Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, Stiglitz discusses the causes of the 2008 recession/depression and goes on to propose reforms needed to avoid a repetition of a similar crisis, advocating government intervention and regulation in a number of areas. Among the policy-makers he criticises are George W. Bush, Larry Summers, and Barack Obama.^[45]

This book does not require an economics background in order to be of value to the reader. Rather it explains Stiglitz's views on the recent economic crisis in terms which make it relevant to the average homeowner, retirement investor, and voter in the United States. He explains how without fundamental changes in economic policy and regulation the position of the US in the world political and economic arena may deteriorate significantly.

[edit] The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (2008)

The Three Trillion Dollar War (co-authored with Linda Bilmes) examines the full cost of the Iraq War, including many hidden costs. The book also discusses the extent to which these costs will be imposed for many years to come, paying special attention to the enormous expenditures that will be required to care for very large numbers of wounded veterans. Stiglitz was openly critical of George W. Bush at the time the book was released.^[46]

[edit] Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development (2006)

In Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development, Stiglitz, José Antonio Ocampo (United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, until 2007), Shari Spiegel (Managing Director, Initiative for Policy Dialogue - IPD), Ricardo Ffrench-Davis (Main Adviser, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean - ECLAC) and Deepak Nayyar (Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi) discuss the current debates on macroeconomics, capital market liberalization and development, and develop a new framework within which one can assess alternative policies. They explain their belief that the Washington Consensus has advocated narrow goals for development (with a focus on price stability) and prescribed too few policy instruments (emphasizing monetary and fiscal policies), and places unwarranted faith in the role of markets. The new framework focuses on real stability and long-term sustainable and equitable growth, offers a variety of non-standard ways to stabilize the economy and promote growth, and accepts that market imperfections necessitate government interventions. Policy-makers have pursued stabilization goals with little concern for growth consequences, while trying to increase growth through structural reforms focused on improving economic efficiency. Moreover, structural policies, such as capital market liberalization, have had major consequences for economic stability. This book challenges these policies by arguing that stabilization policy has important consequences for long-term growth and has often been implemented with adverse consequences. The first part of the book introduces the key questions and looks at the objectives of economic policy from different perspectives. The third part presents a similar analysis for capital market liberalization.

[edit] Making Globalization Work (2006)

Making Globalization Work surveys the inequities of the global economy, and the mechanisms by which developed countries exert an excessive influence over developing nations. Dr. Stiglitz argues that through tariffs, subsidies, an over-complex patent system and pollution, the world is being both economically and politically destabilised. Stiglitz argues that strong, transparent institutions are needed to address these problems. He shows how an examination of incomplete markets can make corrective government policies desirable.

Stiglitz is an exception to the general pro-globalization view of professional economists, according to economist Martin Wolf.^[47] Stiglitz argues that economic opportunities are not widely enough available, that financial crises are too costly and too frequent, and that the rich countries have done too little to address these problems. Making Globalization Work^[48] has sold more than two million copies.

[edit] Fair Trade for All (2005)

In Fair Trade for All, authors Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton argue that it is important to make the trading world more development friendly.^[49] The idea is put forth that the present regime of tariffs and agricultural subsidies is dominated by the interests of former colonial powers and needs to change. The removal of the bias toward the developed world will be beneficial to both developing and developed nations. The developing world is in needs of assistance, and this can only be achieved when developed nations abandon mercantilist based priorities and work towards a more liberal world trade regime.^[50]

[edit] New Paradigm for Monetary Economics (2004)

[edit] The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade (2003)

The Roaring Nineties" is Stiglitz' analysis of the boom and bust of the 1990s. Presented from an insider's point of view, firstly as chair of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors, and later as chief economist of the World Bank, it continues his argument on how misplaced faith in free-market ideology led to the global economic issues of today, with a perceptive focus on US policies.

[edit] Globalization and Its Discontents (2002)

In Globalization and Its Discontents, Stiglitz argues that what are often called "developing economies" are, in fact, not developing at all, and puts much of the blame on the IMF.

Stiglitz bases his argument on the themes that his decades of theoretical work have emphasized: namely, what happens when people lack the key information that bears on the decisions they have to make, or when markets for important kinds of transactions are inadequate or don't exist, or when other institutions that standard economic thinking takes for granted are absent or flawed. Stiglitz stresses the point: "Recent advances in economic theory" (in part referring to his own work) "have shown that whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always, and especially in developing countries, then the invisible hand works most imperfectly." As a result, Stiglitz continues, governments can improve the outcome by well-chosen interventions. Stiglitz argues that when families and firms seek to buy too little compared to what the economy can produce, governments can fight recessions and depressions by using expansionary monetary and fiscal policies to spur the demand for goods and services. At the microeconomic level, governments can regulate banks and other financial institutions to keep them sound. They can also use tax policy to steer investment into more productive industries and trade policies to allow new industries to mature to the point at which they can survive foreign competition. And governments can use a variety of devices, ranging from job creation to manpower training to welfare assistance, to put unemployed labor back to work and cushion human hardship.

Stiglitz complains bitterly that the IMF has done great damage through the economic policies it has prescribed that countries must follow in order to qualify for IMF loans, or for loans from banks and other private-sector lenders that look to the IMF to indicate whether a borrower is creditworthy. The organization and its officials, he argues, have ignored the implications of incomplete information, inadequate markets, and unworkable institutions—all of which are especially characteristic of newly developing countries. As a result, Stiglitz argues, the IMF has often called for policies that conform to textbook economics but do not make sense for the countries to which the IMF is recommending them. Stiglitz seeks to show that these policies have been disastrous for the countries that have followed them.

[edit] Whither Socialism?

Whither Socialism? is based on Stiglitz's Wicksell Lectures, presented at the Stockholm School of Economics in 1990 and presents a summary of information economics and the theory of markets with imperfect information and imperfect competition, as well as being a critique of both free market and market socialist approaches (see Roemer critique, op. cit.). Stiglitz explains how the neoclassical, or Walrasian model ("Walrasian economics" refers to the result of the process which has given birth to a formal representation of Adam Smith's notion of the "invisible hand", along the lines put forward by Léon Walras and encapsulated in the general equilibrium model of Arrow-Debreu), may have wrongly encouraged the belief that market socialism could work. Stiglitz proposes an alternative model, based on the information economics established by the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorems.

One of the reasons Stiglitz sees for the critical failing in the standard neoclassical model, on which market socialism was built, is its failure to consider the problems that arise from lack of perfect information and from the costs of acquiring information. He also identifies problems arising from its assumptions concerning completeness.^[51]

Papers and conferences[link]

Stiglitz wrote a series of papers and held a series of conferences explaining how such information uncertainties may have influence on everything from unemployment to lending shortages. As the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the first term of the Clinton Administration and former chief economist at the World Bank, Stiglitz was able to put some of his views into action. For example, he was an outspoken critic of quickly opening up financial markets in developing countries. These markets rely on access to good financial data and sound bankruptcy laws, but he argued that many of these countries didn't have the regulatory institutions needed to ensure that the markets would operate soundly.

He co-authored a paper titled "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-Based Capital Standard" with Peter Orszag in 2002 in which they concluded "on the basis of historical experience, the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero."^[52]

Private life[link]

Stiglitz married for the third time on October 28, 2004, to Anya Schiffrin, who works at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.^{[citation needed]}

Publications[link]

Books

• 2010, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy, Stiglitz, J.E., W.W. Norton & Company.
• 2010, Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn't Add Up, Fitoussi, J-P., Sen, A. & Stiglitz, J.E., The New Press.
• 2010, The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis, Stiglitz, J.E., The New Press.
• 2010, Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 World Financial Crisis, Jones, S.G., Ocampo, J.A. & Stiglitz, J.E. (Ed.), Oxford University Press.
• 2008, The Three Trillion Dollar War, Bilmes, L. Stiglitz, J.E., W.W. Norton & Company.
• 2006, Making Globalization Work, Stiglitz, J.E., Penguin Books.
• 2006, Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization, and Development, Ffrench-Davis, R., Nayyar, D., Ocampo, J.A., Spiegel, S. & Stiglitz, J.E., Oxford University Press.
• 2005, Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development, Charlton, A.H.G. & Stiglitz, J.E., Oxford University Press.
• 2004, The Development Round of Trade Negotiations in the Aftermath of Cancún, Charlton, A.H.G. & Stiglitz, J.E., Commonwealth Secretariat.
• 2003, The Roaring Nineties, Stiglitz, J.E, W.W. Norton & Company.
• 2003, Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics, Greenwald, B. & Stiglitz, J.E., Cambridge University Press.
• 2002, Economics, Stiglitz, J.E. & Walsh, C.E., W.W. Norton & Company.
• 2002, Globalization and Its Discontents, Stiglitz, J.E., W.W. Norton & Company.
• 2002, Peasants Versus City-Dwellers: Taxation and the Burden of Economic Development, Sah, R.K. & Stiglitz, J.E., Oxford University Press.
• 2002, Principles of Macroeconomics, Stiglitz, J.E. & Walsh, C.E., W.W. Norton & Company.
• 2002, The Rebel Within: Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank, The Rebel Within: Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank, Stiglitz, J.E., Anthem Press.
• 2001, Rethinking the East Asian Miracle, Stiglitz, J.E. & Yusuf, S. (Ed.), Oxford University Press.
• 2000, Frontiers of Development Economics: The Future in Perspective, Meier, G.M. & Stiglitz, J.E. (Ed.), World Bank.
• 1996, Whither Socialism?, Stiglitz, J.E., MIT Press.
• 1989, The Economic Role of the State, Stiglitz, J.E., Wiley-Blackwell.
• 1986, Economics of the Public Sector, Stiglitz, J.E., W.W. Norton & Company.
• 1981, Theory of Commodity Price Stabalization, Newberry, D.M.G. & Stiglitz, J.E., Oxford University Press.
• 1969, Readings in the Modern Theory of Economic Growth, Stiglitz, J.E. & Uzawa, H., MIT Press.

Book chapters

• 2009. "Regulation and Failure", in David Moss and John Cisternino (eds.), New Perspectives on Regulation, ch. 1, pp. 11-23. Cambridge: The Tobin Project.
• 2001, New Ideas About Old Age Security: Toward Sustainable Pension Systems in the 21st Century, edited with Robert Holzmann, World Bank, January 2001.

Selected scholarly articles

• 2007, "Prizes, Not Patents" post-autistic economics review, issue no. 42
• 1998, Distinguished lecture on economics in government: The private uses of public interests: Incentives and institutions. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12, 3–22.
• 1998, Redefining the Role of the State - What should it do? How should it do it? And how should these decisions be made? Paper presented at the Tenth Anniversary of MITI Research Institute, Tokyo, March 1998.
• 1996, The World Bank Research Observer: No 2: August 1996 by Joseph Stiglitz
• 1993, "Post Walrasian and post Marxian economics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 7, pp. 109–14
• 1993, "Market socialism and neoclassical economics," in Bardhan, P. K. and Roemer, J. E. (eds.), Market Socialism. The Current Debate, New York: Oxford University Press
• 1989, "Principal and agent," in J. Eatwell, M. Milgate and P. Newman (eds.), The New Palgrave. Allocation, Information and Markets. New York: W. W. Norton
• 1987, "The causes and consequences of the dependence of quality on prices", Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 25, pp. 1–48
• 1981 (with A. Weiss), "Credit Rationing in Markets with Imperfect Information", American Economic Review, vol. 71, pp. 393–410
• 1977 (with A.K. Dixit), "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity", American Economic Review, vol. 67, pp. 297–308
• 1976 (with M. Rothschild), "Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information", Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 90, pp.  629–650.
• 1974, "Incentives and Risk Sharing in Sharecropping", Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, 219-255.
• 1974, "Alternative Theories of Wage Determination and Unemployment in LDCs: The Labour Turnover Model", Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 81, pp. 194–227
• 1971 (with M. Rothschild), "Increasing Risk: II. Its Economic Consequences", Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 3, pp. 66–84
• 1970 (with M. Rothschild), "Increasing Risk: I. A Definition", Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 2, pp. 225–243

Articles in popular press

• 2011, "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%", Vanity Fair, May 2011
• 2010, "The Non-Existent Hand". London Review of Books 32 (8): 17–18. 22 April 2010. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n08/joseph-stiglitz/the-non-existent-hand. Retrieved 14 February 2011.  Review of Skidelsky, Robert (2009). Keynes: the Return of the Master. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-1-84614-258-1. 
• 2009, "Wall Street’s Toxic Message", Vanity Fair, July 2009
• 2009, "America's socialism for the rich", The Guardian, June 2009
• 2009, "Capitalist Fools", Vanity Fair, January 2009
• 2009, "Report: The $10 Trillion Hangover: Paying the Price for Eight Years of Bush", with Linda Bilmes, Harper's Magazine, 318/1904, January 2009
• 2007, "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush", Vanity Fair, December 2007 Issue
• 2007, Where is the World Going To, Mr. Stiglitz? directed by Jacques Sarasin, First Run Features.
• 2002, "Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-based Capital Standard", for FannieMae Volume I, Issue 2 March 2002

Video and online sources

• 2010, What should Europe do about Greece?, BBC Newsnight February 10, 2010.
• 2010, Freefall: Joseph Stiglitz at the Commonwealth Club
• 2008, The Three Trillion Dollar War a panel discussion with Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes regarding their new book, `The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.` Feb 28, 2008 at Columbia University.
• 2007, Where is the World Going To, Mr. Stiglitz? directed by Jacques Sarasin, First Run Features.
• World Bank Video presentation
• Online access to Stiglitz published papers, at his own website

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

See also[link]

• List of economists
• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Joseph Stiglitz

• josephstiglitz.com
• Joseph E. Stiglitz at Columbia University
  • Joseph Stiglitz committee chair profile at Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University
• Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics 2001 lecture at NobelPrize.org
• Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc
• Publications at the National Bureau of Economic Research
• Joseph Stiglitz at Econlib
• Column archives at Project Syndicate
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Joseph Stiglitz on Charlie Rose
• Joseph Stiglitz at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Joseph Stiglitz in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Joseph Stiglitz collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Joseph Stiglitz with Matthew Bishop at the 92nd Street Y, January 2010
• Interview at The Commonwealth Club, February 2010
• Free Markets and the World Economy with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, July 2010
• Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair, May 2011

He

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2010)

Stefan Basil Molyneux Molyneux speaking at Drexel University Born 24 September 1966 Athlone, Ireland School Voluntaryism Main interests Anarcho-capitalism, Atheism, Austrian Economics, Education, Ethics, Family, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Religion Influenced by Aristotle, Nathaniel Branden, Harry Browne, Hans Hermann Hoppe, Alice Miller, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Socrates Influenced Ian Bernard

Stefan Basil Molyneux (born 24 September 1966) is a blogger, essayist, author, and host of the Freedomain Radio^[1] series of podcasts, living in Mississauga, Canada. He has written numerous articles and smaller essays which have been published on libertarian websites such as LewRockwell.com, antiwar.com and Strike The Root,^[2][3] recorded over 2000 podcasts, produced over 800 videos, and written several books which are self-published except for his first, which was published by Publish America. In 2006 Molyneux quit his previous job in the field of computer software and works full-time on Freedomain Radio, a philosophical community website which is funded through donations. He self-identifies as a full-time parent and philosopher.