Stiglitz shares views from his new book, "Making Globalization Work"

Addis Ababa 19 September, 2007: Nobel-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, recently held broad discussions with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) emerging from his recent book, “Making globalization work”. The book offers ideas on policies that work, including how countries can grow without degrading the environment and a framework for free and fair global trade.

During the discussions, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary of ECA, Abdoulie Janneh shared ECA’s work in promoting sustainable and equitable growth, statistical development, regional integration in the context of meeting the MDGs and governance. He noted that Stiglitz’s views on globalization make him stand out as one of the biggest advocates of marginalized developing world economies and said his views resonate with ECA's research and analysis. "We work closely with the African Union and NEPAD and place emphasis on building Africa’s capacity in a number of the continent's special technical needs, such as in statistical development where capacity gaps abound," he said.

In response to ECA’s focus on governance, Mr. Stiglitz informed the discussions about the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), an NGO he founded in 2000 to help developing countries explore policy alternatives, and enable wider civic participation in economic policymaking. IPD has set up a taskforce that seeks to inquire into the lessons Africa can learn from the East Asia miracle in the context of governance and the developmental State.

“We are also interested in looking beyond the platitudes of good governance and the role of central government. We are looking at the more complex question of the involvement of local and grassroots communities in the governance debate,” he said.

With respect to ECA’s work on statistical development, he noted that IPD’s interests lie in trying to understand the varying complexities of statistical reporting and analysis and the question of uniform forms of conducting surveys, tackling reporting bias and reconciling macro numbers and household surveys.

The discussions concluded with a mutual agreement on further dialogue with Mr. Stiglitz in the context of ECA's forthcoming 50th Anniversary and Conference of Ministers of Finance to be held in early 2008, where it is expected that he will be able to share his thoughts on Africa's development.

Background:
Stiglitz has published widely, including the seminal “Globalization and its discontents”, in 2002 in which he argued that globalization has failed to deliver on its promises, a failure he attributed to structural flaws in international financial institutions as well as limited information and imperfect competition. Stiglitz and the former Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Socal Affairs and ECLAC's Executive Secretary, Jose Antonio Ocampo are co-presidents of IPD.