Professor of Finance and Economics Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Stiglitz shares the award with George Akerlof and A. Michael Spence for their “analyses of markets with asymmetric information.”

This distinction caps a remarkable 35-year career during which Stiglitz has made seminal and fundamental contributions to every subfield of economic theory.

An enormously influential player in the making and evaluation of economic policy, Stiglitz served — first as a member and later as chairman with cabinet rank — in President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was later named chief economist of the World Bank. Returning to academia, Stiglitz was the Joel Stern Visiting Scholar at Columbia Business School from 1999 to 2001 before accepting a full-time joint professorship with Columbia Business School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of International and Public Affairs in 2001.