On March 19, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics and Tsinghua Honorary Professor, visited SPPM to give a public lecture, “Freefall: Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis for Economic Theory and Policy.” The event, chaired by Dean XUE Lan of SPPM, drew a large crowd from across the university.
During his lecture, Professor Stiglitz shed light on the impact of the economic crisis on economic theory and policy by discussing the fundamental flaws and problems of the long standing premises of standard economics that have been exposed by the financial crisis. He argued that with imperfect information, markets are neither efficient nor self-correcting. Agency problems and externalities plagued the mortgage markets, and irrationalities on part of the investors and homeowners eventually led to the current global crisis. Professor Stiglitz claimed that Keynes had been correct in advocating for market regulation and that in the age of globalization, each country is responsible for its own economy and citizens. A lively Q & A session followed the lecture. Questions ranged from the exchange rate of RMB and the impact of the China Model to the current Greek crisis.
Professor Joseph Stiglitz is currently a professor at Columbia University and the Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 for his analysis of markets with asymmetric information. In 2009, he was appointed by the President of the UN General Assembly as Chair of the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System. He has been an Honorary Professor of Tsinghua University since 2008.
