Coming to Ghana -Professor Joseph Stiglitz

Professor Joseph Stiglitz a Noble Prize Laureate in Economics will be in the country from July 6 to 9 for an official engagement, at the invitation of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET).

While in the country Professor Stiglitz will have a media encounter at the Ghana International Press Centre on Tuesday July 8 at 11.15am and a public lecture at 5.30pm the same day at the Bristish Council.

Prof Stiglitz who will be accompanied by his wife Anya, a lecturer in media studies at the University of Columbia will visit some journalism training institutions and media houses.

Prof Stiglitz is an American economist and a member of the Columbia University faculty. He is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal (1979) and the The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (2001).

Former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, he is known for his critical view of globalization, free-market economists (whom he calls "free market fundamentalists") and some international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In 2000 Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. Since 2001 he has been a member of the Columbia faculty, and has held the rank of University Professor since 2003.

He also chairs the University of Manchester's Brooks World Poverty Institute and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Stiglitz is the second most cited economist in the world, as of 2008.

Recognized around the world as a leading economic educator, he has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

He founded one of the leading economics journals, The Journal of Economic Perspectives. His book Globalization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton June 2001) has been translated into 35 languages, besides at least two pirated editions, and in the non-pirated editions has sold more than one million copies worldwide.

Other recent books include The Roaring Nineties (W.W. Norton), Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics (Cambridge University Press) with Bruce Greenwald, Fair Trade for All (Oxford University Press), with Andrew Charlton, and Making Globalization Work, (WW Norton and Penguin/ Allen Lane, September 2006). His most recent book, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, with Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, was published in March 2008 by WW Norton and Penguin/ Allen Lane.