fachai Talking Trump and Economics With Joseph Stiglitz in Sydney
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For more than three decades, Joseph Stiglitz has been working within and critiquing the system of global economics.
He was the World Bank’s chief economist in the late ’90s, after serving in the administration of President Bill Clinton, and in 2001 he was awarded the Nobel in economic science for a body of work focused on imbalances in information — the way, for example, a seller may possess more information than a buyer, or a borrower many know more about his or her ability to repay a loan than the lender does.
The central insight of his life’s work can perhaps be summed up in the idea, now more widely accepted, that free markets are not always rational and tend to be freer for some than for others. In his latest book, “The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society,” he found a sharper way to say it by quoting Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford philosopher, who said: “Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.”
I sat down with him this week in Sydney, during his latest tour of a country he first visited in 1967. This time, he was traveling for panels and lectures sponsored by the Australia Institute. And as has always been the case — at least in my experience, having interviewed him at a few global inflection points — he was unassuming and generous with his time and thoughts.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTHe even let me bring along a couple of 10th graders working on school assignments: Lyra Mesimeris, who has expressed interest in journalism, and Balthazar or Baz Oliva Cave, my son, who has hinted (just once) that he’s curious about economics.
The interview below with Professor Stiglitz (at age 81, he still teaches at Columbia University), conducted by the three of us, has been edited for space and clarity.
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