Inequality in America

• Date: 01 January 2015
• Published date: 01 January 2015
• Author: Joseph E. Stiglitz
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716214552784
• Subject Matter: 2014 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Lecture on Social Science and Public Policy

8 ANNALS, AAPSS, 657, January 2015

DOI: 10.1177/0002716214552784

Inequality in

America: A

Policy Agenda

for a Stronger

Future

By

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

552784ANN The Annals of the American Academyinequality in America

research-article2014

It is a real pleasure for me to accept this

award, named in memory of one of America’s

great statesmen and thinkers: Daniel Patrick

Moynihan.

Our intellectual paths crossed in many ways.

Some 20 years ago, serving in the Clinton

administration as a member and then chairman

of the Council of Economic Advisers, I became

fascinated with the role of secrecy in govern-

ment. It was natural that I would be interested

in the subject: a major focus of my work in

economics had been information—including

the incentives that market participants had for

revealing and not revealing relevant informa-

tion. Secrecy and transparency were the coun-

terpoints in the political sphere. No one working

in government could fail to notice the excessive

focus on secrecy, the lack of transparency—

even on the part of those who publicly preached

transparency.

Of course, the defining work in this area was

Senator Moynihan’s book Secrecy: The

American Experience. At about the same time

that he wrote that book, I wrote a paper on

secrecy (later given as the Oxford Amnesty

Lecture at Oxford in 1999 and subsequently

published in Stiglitz [2001] and Stiglitz [2003]).

I was more than pleased that he called me in to

discuss it, and that he circulated it among his

Senate colleagues.

He shared with me an abiding concern

about the poverty and inequality that afflicted

our country. It was this concern about poverty

and inequality that led me to shift away from

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia

University; the winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial

Prize in Economics; and a lead author of the 1995

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report,

which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. His most

recent book is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s

Divided Society Endangers Our Future (W. W. Norton

2012).