The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society by Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz will be our book for a special edition of Australia’s Biggest Book Club.

Despite its manifest failures, the narrative of neoliberalism retains its grip on the public mind and the policies of governments all over the world.

By this narrative, less regulation and more ‘animal spirits’ capitalism produces not only greater prosperity, but more freedom for individuals in society—and is therefore morally better.

But whose freedom are we thinking about? What happens when one person’s freedom comes at the expense of another’s? And should the freedoms of corporations be allowed to impinge upon those of individuals in the ways they now do?

In The Road to Freedom, Professor Stiglitz offers a powerful re-evaluation of democracy, economics and what constitutes a good society—and provides a roadmap of how we might achieve it.

This is a free webinar but registration is essential.

Professor Stiglitz is visiting Australia as a guest of the Australia Institute, as part of our 30th anniversary celebrations in 2024.

The Author

Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz

Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, former chief economist of the World Bank and best-selling author. Professor Stiglitz is an economist and a professor at Columbia University Business School, as well as co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute.

Professor Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979, and he was the recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize in 2018 – for leading a global conversation about the crisis caused by economic inequality and exposing the violence inflicted by market fundamentalism. He is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers.