Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and public policy analyst of the New Keynesian school of economic thought. Stiglitz was born in Indiana in 1943 to Jewish parents and completed his PhD in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967. His knowledge of the Keynesian model was developed during his time as a research fellow at the University of Cambridge. After graduation, he taught at several colleges, including Yale University, Stanford University, Princeton University, and Oxford University.

Stiglitz is known for having held several academic and policy roles. He served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under the Clinton administration between 1995 and 1997, after which he became the senior vice president of the World Bank between 1997 and 2000. In 2001, Stiglitz received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on markets with asymmetrical information and began teaching economics at Columbia University in the School of International and Public Affairs. He acted as the lead author of the Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in 1995, which won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He has advised the Obama administration and acted as the president of the International Economic Association between 2011 and 2014.