Joe Stiglitz is a very smart man, perhaps the most prolific economic theorist of his generation. His book Whither Socialism? contains a list of over 160 articles which he had published in the leading journals of our profession. For his work on asymmetric information, Stiglitz was justly awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.



However, Stiglitz is also scandalously sloppy as a public intellectual. Robert Skidelsky recently summed up Stiglitz's problem as follows: "he lacks the eloquence, urgency, and passion of the preacher, while he has too often abandoned the rigor of the scientist."



Stiglitz, in fact, seems to write words down in public forums just because he has thoughts pop into his head and without really thinking through what it is he is saying rigorously. He thought it, therefore it must be right. It is an example of the excesses of the college professor pontificating in class --- remember the scenes with Sam Kinison in Back to School. Now Stiglitz has written an op-ed that claims that Neo-Liberalism has reached its end. In this op-ed he actually claims that neo-liberalism was never supported by economic theory nor economic history. Instead, neo-liberalism was a political doctrine supported by interest groups. So much for the Nobel winning ideas of Hayek, Friedman, Stigler, Buchanan, Coase, Becker, Lucas and V. Smith. So much for the empirical evidence on the governmental causes of the Great Depression, the historical record on economic performance and political tryanny under communism, the failed efforts at development planning in Africa and Latin America, etc.



One must remember that Stiglitz actually wrote once that while "Chicago economics was well-funded, it was not well-founded." See just whatever thought pops into his head goes immediately to paper.



Not only does he dismiss in this latest op-ed an entire stream of intellectual history in economics from Adam Smith through J. B. Say and Bastiat to Mises and Hayek, and the other thinkers I named, but he is trying to dismiss without any data analysis the positive benefits of market reforms for much of the world over the past 30 years. Again, lets remember this is just an op-ed -- though of course one written by a thinker that is internationally recognized and respected as an economist. Thankfully, Andrei Shleifer's "The Age of Milton Friedman" will be published in the Journal of Economic Literature, and it contains data and argument that demonstrates the empirical record is contrary to what Stiglitz suggests so professional opinion has yet to be completely swayed over to Stiglitz's opinion on theory and evidence.