Talk:Joseph E. Stiglitz

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Formatting needs to be improved.

Done ! 200.153.162.164 19:25, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Find out whether he was fired or quit from the World Bank, and whether this was in 1999 or 2000. Susan Mason

Done - resigned Nov 24, 1999, source The New York Times 200.153.161.142 18:38, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
"Mess" on Stiglitz's resignation/firing was completely cleared-up and is explained now, with page specific references. 200.153.162.164 19:28, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bloggers as external links?

Someone's added their rant about the Iraq war in the 'external links' section. That is far from an official source of information for anything, and has extremely questionable relevance to the rest of the article. Random guy's disagreement with an economist shouldn't be placed near links to more official sources of information - we all have opinions but that isn't the place to put them.

Totally agree with the above. I took it out, because it was a link to a random source with an opinion. If the source was authoritative, that would be another thing. Apparently the blogger is Michael Szanto, who happens to be a private investment banker. Those credentials are not substantive enough to be taken seriously.

[edit] Questionable neutrality in "Leaving the World Bank" section

I'll admit that I have little familiarity with the events records, but the following section does not seem NPOV:

"Wolfensohn had privately empathised with Stiglitz's views, yet this time he had gone too far. Wolfensohn, worried for his second term - which Summers had threatened to veto - and with it, his Nobel Peace prize, had little other option left."

For the first sentence, a citation is needed, and "this time he had gone too far" seems a bit dramatic. As someone who knows little about the situation, the comment about the Nobel Peace prize seems cryptic, as no one involved has won one, as far as I can tell. Also, the remark that Wolfensohn "had little other option left" is certainly editorial.

Trying to fix the mess: 1st, the reference was misquoted, it says, clearly, on page 6 that Stiglitz resigned from the World Bank:
"This essay describes two recent cases where a senior person in the Bank said things contrary to what the US Treasury wanted to hear the Bank saying, and ended up leaving the Bank in a blaze of publicity. The first case concerns the resignation of Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist from 1996 to 1999, and then his firing as special advisor to the president (...)".
He was latter fired from being "special advisor to the president", a clearly political post.

200.153.161.142 18:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Critique of Whither Socialism"

The following "critique", full of subjective value statements, requires references otherwise it constitutes original research and WP is not a soapbox.

Wikipedia might not be a soap box, but certainly is full of bad manners, ignorancy and pretention. You did not have to erase a carefully done work just because you have no idea where it came from; asking politely for a reference would have been much more appropriate. ALL critique reviews on books have opinions, by definition, or no critique they would be. The text you arrogantly removed, follows a neutral description of the book, and is clearly marked as a "critique" : 1. "A critical review or commentary, especially one dealing with works of art or literature. 2. A critical discussion of a specified topic."

200.153.161.141 20:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me for my "ignorancy" and "pretension" but I was following customary wikipedia rules by removing a disputed paragraph to talk for discussion. Moreover, not sourcing your contribution violates copyright laws. It is true that ALL critiques have opinions but as far as wikipedia is concerned they should not be YOUR opinions or commentaries but rather those of qualified authorities on the subject. Afterall, what makes your opinions more relevant for inclusion in the article than mine or Joe Blows'? So now at least we know that the source of your opinions - which were often cut and pasted without even the inclusion of "quotation marks" is a writer from The Cato Institute- certainly a relevant fact for informed readers to take into account.
The full Prychitko's famous review article on Stiglitz book is online readable, for anyone to read, disagree or criticize. or even learn something. If in your personal opinion David L. Prychitko is a "writer from The Cato Institute", what else can be discussed  ? 200.153.161.141 21:09, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Peter J. Boettke's critique (Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 189-191) is very, very similar to Prychitko's, and has been published in a mainstream journal; the reason I chose to comment Prychitko's is because its text is freely readable online in full, by any Wikipedia reader, while to read the Boettke's article more "chicly" in the Journal of Economic Literature one will have to pay a fee of $10.00 USD.
Whither Socialism? by Joseph E. Stiglitz, Author(s) of Review: Peter J. Boettke, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 189-191

200.153.161.141 22:21, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

"Chicly????" (rolls eyes once again). Anyway what I objected to was your exaggerated generalization - "Whither Socialism ? has been subject to various critiques - all roughly in the same lines of reasoning - such as the one by Peter J. Boettke." Have you read all of the critiques of Whither Socialism? Do you realize that there are critiques of it from Marxist, institutionalist, Austrian, post-keynesian and neoclassical perspectives among others? They can hardly be said to be all the same.BernardL 22:52, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I do not object to critiques, only good critiques can improve an article. What I do object is to censorhip. BTW, I agree with "generalization" (but not exagerated...). When I wrote that sentence I was thinking of the three critiques I read (which are now referred on the article). I believe, of course, those are the most important ones. My point got poorly phrased, thank you for pointing this out 200.153.161.141 02:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Critique

Whither Socialism hopes to go beyond the confines of technical economic theory, as its title implies. Stiglitz makes efforts to join the dialogue in political economy, and wonders "whether the insights of modern economic theory and the utopian ideals of the nineteenth century can be brought closer together?" (p. 277). It is precisely this comment that invites criticism, not so much because he wants to save some socialist ideals (incredibly, however, through a "people's capitalism" [p. 265]), but rather because of his unexamined presuppositions regarding how to do so. Stiglitz insists that we should not ask whether or not the state has a role to play in the economy, but rather how large a role, and in what specific tasks (p. 231). For Stiglitz, the problem is posed correctly only when we seek an "appropriate balance between markets and government" (p. 267), but he fails to indicate what an "appropriate balance" would be. Stiglitz formally demonstrates the potential efficiency-enhancing properties of the state based on the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorems (establishing the - constrained - Pareto inefficiency of market economies with imperfect information and incomplete markets), and believes that solutions to worldly problems can become illuminated by this new set of mathematical theorems, to replace the old theorems of Arrow-Debreu and Lange-Lerner (pp. 4-6, 231-32).

Stiglitz mentions that economics must be recast as something more than a constrained maximization problem, and proposes his own alternative--a mathematical theorem that encompasses more complex, nonlinear vectors.

Stiglitz's main insight is generally correct --that the state cannot be ruled out or that it should be ruled in --, but leaves open the grand constitutional questions: How will the coercive institutions of the state be constrained? What is the relation between the state and civil society? His book fails on these political aspects because it has not addressed the broader constitutional concerns that James McGill Buchanan Jr. [1] (1975) and other economists have raised.````

Why does the article mention three critics, but only feature one critique? Why not have a concise paragraph regarding each of the major criticisms? It seems biased to me to have the only critique come from a devout freetrader perspective. Also, lumping in the names of other critics without establishing where they stand implies some sort of consensus among the critics, which I sincerely doubt is the case. 72.78.159.131 09:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Iniquities" ? Or "inequities?"

How about a little less P.O.V. here? There is a tone of advocacy in this article that undermines its credibility. This was surely not the design of the article's author(s); come on, he won the Nobel, so perhaps his policies need no more validation here, just explanation. At first reading, I thought that "iniquities" was a malapropism. After reading the whole article, however, I think that maybe "iniquities" really is the word that this author inteneded to use.

This quote is intriguing: "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 pushed." How was the pressure applied? Why was it enormous? Where did the author get this information? Citations, please?

I would make contributions and edits to this article but I don't know anything about Dr. Stiglitz or economics. . . . that's why I visited this article in the first place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.54.15.61 (talk) 15:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

You surely don't...

[edit] What is conservative?

"The second part examines the central issues of macroeconomics, presenting an analysis of economic models and policy perspectives on stabilization from conservative, Keynesian, and heterodox perspectives. The third part presents a similar analysis for capital market liberalization."

As far as I know there is no "conservative" school of economics. The link goes to neo-classical economics. If it is okay with the rest of you I'll just change conservative to neo-classical. --Jayson Virissimo (talk) 18:13, 14 May 2008 (UTC)