Renowned economist and 2001 Nobel Laureate Joseph Eugene Stiglitz will be the keynote speaker for the twenty-fifth Organization of American States(OAS) conference in the Lecture Series of the Americas, which on this occasion will be held at the National Library of Lima, Peru, at 6:00 p.m (local time).

Stiglitz attended Amherst College from 1960 to 1963, and then went on to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Between 1965 and 1966, he worked in Chicago with Hirofumi Uzawa. In the following years, he earned his doctorate degree at MIT and a Fulbright Scholarship for research. He has taught at MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton and Oxford Universities. He currently teaches at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.

Besides his numerous and influential contributions to microeconomics, Stiglitz has held several public offices. Under the Bill Clinton administration, he served as President of the Council of Economic Advisers (1995-1997). At the World Bank, he served as first vice-president and economic chief (1997-2000), before authorities from his own country forced him to resign for judging global economic policies, condemning their “intrinsic injustice,” and launching harsh criticism towards the IMF and the United States Treasure Department, specially the “shock therapy” to the Russian financial crisis.

His most famous research deals with “screening,” a technique used by an economic agent to extract private information from another. This important contribution to the theory of asymmetry of information led him to share the Sweden Bank award in memory of Alfred Nobel with George A. Akerlof and Michael Spence. Within the framework of economic theories, Stiglitz would be part of the Neo-Keynesian school of thought.

In his 35-year career, he has published more than 300 articles and a dozen books. Besides his technical economy publications, Stiglitz is author of Whither Socialism? a non-technical book that provides an introduction to the theories behind the failure of the socialist economies in Eastern Europe and the role of imperfect information in the markets. In 2002, he wrote Globalization and its Discontents, where he states that the IMF is at the disposal of its largest shareholder, the United States, over the poorest nations it was created to serve.

Created by the OAS Permanent Council to promote principles and values in the countries of the hemisphere, the Lecture Series of the Americas invites internationally renowned speakers to address key issues such as democracy, human rights, social development, hemispheric security and the fight against poverty. The conferences are possible thanks to financial contributions form Peru’s San Martin de Porres University and the governments of China and France.

The conference will be Webcast live in English and Spanish at http://www.oas.org/OASpage/Live/OASlive.asp



WHAT: Twenty-Fifth conference of the Series of the Americas

WHEN: December 17, 2007
6:p.m (local Lima, Peru time)

WHERE: National Library of Lima
Peru

Reference: AVI-071/07