'If you have to trust somebody in matters of economics, you could do worse than a Nobel Prize-winning former chief economist of the World Bank ... the superb achievement of this book, however, is how little you do have to take on trust' - Sam Leith, Telegraph

Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist at the World Bank until January 2000. He is currently University Professor of the Columbia Business School and Chair of the Management Board and Director of Graduate Summer Programs, Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and is the author of the best-selling Globalization and Its Discontents, The Roaring Nineties, and Making Globalization Work, all published by Penguin. Linda J. Bilmes is a Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University. During the Clinton administration, she served as Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget in the U.S. Department of Commerce.