Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is a noted American economist, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on asymmetric information. He had his early education under the public school system in his hometown Gary, Indiana. Later he earned his bachelor degree from Amherst College and his PhD from MIT. Thereafter, he worked with many noted economists on both sides of the Atlantic and taught at MIT, Yale, Stanford, Oxford, and Princeton before joining Columbia University, of which he is still a faculty member. Noted for his works on microeconomics, he has also contributed significantly to policy matters. For four years, he served in the Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton’s government and later occupied the post of Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, World Bank. More recently, he was an advisor to Barack Obama; but was sharply critical of his administration’s financial-industry rescue plan. He is also a prolific writer and along with his publishing over 300 technical articles, he has also written a number of books on various economic issues.