News Releases

UWI to host lecture by Nobel Laureate, Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz

For Release Upon Receipt - November 19, 2009

St. Augustine


The University of the West Indies (UWI) Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social & Economic Studies (SALISES) and The Open Lectures Committee will host a Distinguished Lecture by Nobel Laureate, Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz, titled “Economic Performance and Social Well-Being”, on Monday 23rd November, 2009, at 7 pm at the Daaga Auditorium, UWI, St. Augustine. The lecture will be hosted by University Pro Vice Chancellor and St. Augustine Campus Principal, Professor Clement K. Sankat, and chaired by Dr. Hamid Ghany, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences.  

Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Professor Stiglitz was a major contributor to the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008 Professor Stiglitz was asked by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to chair the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, and the final report of the Commission was released in September 2009. In his address on Monday, Professor Stiglitz is expected to address some of the more important conclusions of this report, which deals head-on with the apparent contradiction between good economic performance, as measured by GDP per capita and the level of well-being and happiness in society at large.

Professor Stiglitz’s lecture is a part of the Distinguished Open Lecture series, initiated by The UWI, to create opportunities for world-renowned scholars to share their work with the campus and national communities.

To find out more, please contact Patrick Watson, Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), at (868) 662-6965 or patrick.watson@sta.uwi.edu, or visit the SALISES website at http://www.sta.uwi.edu/salises.

 

 

About Joseph Stiglitz

2001 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz received his PhD from MIT in 1967 and became a full Professor at Yale in 1970. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, MIT and Oxford, and is now University Professor at Columbia and Chair of Columbia's Committee on Global Thought. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. He was the lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, served as chair of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress and as chair of the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System. Professor Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95 and Chairman from 1995-97. He was Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000 and continues to serve on numerous other boards.

Professor Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, "The Economics of Information," exploring the consequences of information asymmetries and pioneering such pivotal concepts as adverse selection and moral hazard, now standard tools of the economist. He has made significant contributions to macroeconomics, monetary theory, development economics, trade theory, public and corporate finance, the theories of industrial and rural organization, welfare economics and of income and wealth distribution. His work has helped explain why markets do not always work well, and how selective government intervention may improve their performance. His textbooks have been translated into more than a dozen languages and his book Globalization and Its Discontents has been translated into 35 languages. He also founded the prestigious Journal of Economic Perspectives. His recent books include The Roaring Nineties, Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics, Fair Trade for All, Making Globalization Work and The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. 

 

About UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with over 50 physical site locations across the region, serving over 20 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Pure & Applied Sciences, Science and Agriculture, and Social Sciences.  

Contact

  • Patrick Watson, Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES)

  • Tel.: (868) 662-6965
  • Email: patrick.watson@sta.uwi.edu