Joseph E. Stiglitz is university professor at Columbia and Co-Chair of Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought. He is also the co-founder and co-president of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. Before joining the Columbia faculty, he held appointments at Yale, Oxford, Princeton and Stanford. Internationally recognised as one of the leading economists of his generation, Professor Stiglitz has made important contributions to virtually all of the major subfiields of economics, in particular the economics of information, one of the key topics highlighted in this text. Recognised around the world as a leading economic educator, he has written textbooks that have been translated into more than a dozen languages.In 2001, Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Earlier in his career, he received the American Economic Association’s John Bates Clark Medal, which is given every two years to the most outstanding economist under the age of forty. In 2011, Time magazine named Stiglitz one of the 100 most infl uential people in the world. Stiglitz was Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration, and later served as Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank. In 2008, he chaired the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, and in 2009 he was appointed by the United Nations General Assembly as chair of the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System.In 2010, Stiglitz was invited to speak by the Economics Society of Australia, and gave a number of media interviews on his tour. In particular, he made comment on the state of the local economy in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the role of natural resources, and the country’s response to climate change.Carl E. Walsh is distinguished professor of economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he teaches principles of economics. He previously held faculty appointments at Princeton and the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and has been a visiting professor at Stanford. Walsh’s research deals primarily with central banking and issues associated with the theory of monetary policy. His recent work as focused on the role of transparency and monetary policy announcements, the role of the cost channel in the transmission of monetary policy, and the integration of modern theories of unemployment into frameworks for monetary policy analysis.Before joining the Santa Cruz faculty, Walsh was senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where he continues to serve as a visiting scholar. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of Kansas City, Philadelphia, and at the Board of Governors. He has taught courses in monetary economics to the research department and staff economists at the central banks of Hong Kong, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom, and at the International Monetary Fund. He is currently co-editor of the International Journal of Central Banking, and an associate editor of the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking and the Journal of Economics and Business. He is also on the editorial boards of the Journal of Macroeconomics and New Zealand Economic Papers.Ross Guest is a professor of economics and Dean (Learning and Teaching) in the Griffi th Business School at Griffi th University. He is an adjunct professor with the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG), a senior teaching fellow with the Office of Learning and Teaching, and co-editor of the International Review of Economics Education. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Melbourne. Guest was first employed as a lecturer at Monash University in 1991, and left in 1998 to join Griffi th University, where he was appointed to professor in 2003. He won a national Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning in 2006 (formerly administered by the Carrick Institute). He has published over 90 academic articles, numerous media publications, and has received four grants as chief investigator from the Australian Research Council. Guest was an invited participant at the Prime Minister’s 2020 Summit in 2008 on the basis of his published research on population economics.Jeff Gow (B Ag Ec (Hons), M Ec and PhD (Monash)) is a professor of economics and politics discipline coordinator in the School of Commerce at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba. He is also a research associate of the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. Gow is a board member of the HIV Foundation Queensland, and a professor extraordinary in the Department of Agricultural Economics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His research interests encompass health economics (especially HIV/AIDS in Africa), and agricultural economics and policy, both in Australia and overseas. He has won three nationally competitive grants, and worked as a consultant to international organisations like UNAIDS, USAID, UNICEF and the World Health Organization, and national governments in South Africa, Britain, Sweden and Germany. Gow has over 25 years’ tertiary teaching experience encompassing a wide range of economics courses — including both microeconomics and macroeconomics at the introductory, intermediate and advanced levels — as well as specialist courses in mathematical, health, agricultural, policy, international and environmental economics. He has supervised 19 higher degree research students to completion and has 3 current PhD students.Massimiliano Tani is a professor of finance and economics in the School of Business at the University of New South Wales (Canberra) and is currently a senior research associate at the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He holds a PhD in economics from the Australian National University(2003), a graduate diploma in university learning and teaching (UNSW, 2004), a MSc(Econ) from the London School of Economics (1992) and a Laurea in economics from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy (1989). Tani has taught macroeconomics for a decade, earning faculty and university awards for excellence in teaching. He regularly comments on economic news in the media. His research work and interest focus on knowledge diffusion and skilled migration. His published research also addresses students’ educational choices and labour market outcomes and attitudes towards depression, and the role of tutors in enhancing learning experiences. Before moving to Australia in 1999, Tani lived in London, working in investment banking.Bill Richmond is a former member of the School of Economics at the University of Queensland. He holds degrees from the University of Melbourne, the University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Queensland. Richmond currently coordinates courses in introductory economic theory, economic history and economic policy at both the University of Southern Queensland and the University of Queensland, as well as serving as Director of a not-for-profit company (MindVentures), which offers educational courses to mature-aged people. He has previously lectured and tutored in a wide range of courses relating to the policy implications of economic theory, including business economics and both Australian and international political economy, as well as those in microeconomic and macroecomic theory. Richmond’s particular interests lie in the application of economic theory to a range of political and economic policies. He is particularly concerned that decision-makers in politics and business bring rigorous economic thinking to bear on such issues while maintaining an appreciation of their social and political dimensions.
