Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz discusses how effective competition policy can lower prices and combat inflation, in conversation with Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director of the Australia Institute.

Australia is experiencing a period of rising prices and sticky inflation, in part due to excessive corporate profits following the Covid lockdowns. ​In an economy dominated by the big banks, the big supermarkets, the big mining companies and the big consulting firms, Professor Joseph Stiglitz will discuss what role can effective competition policy can play in addressing the cost of living crisis.

Professor Joseph E. 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. He is also the author of numerous best-selling books including, most recently, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.

Ebony Bennett is deputy director of the Australia Institute and host of its popular webinar series and Follow the Money podcast. Beginning her career as a journalist in the Canberra press gallery, Ebony has worked in federal politics in a variety of roles for two decades and has published research on climate change and energy, gender and street harassment and contributed chapters to Morrison’s Miracle: The 2019 Australian Federal Election (ANU Press 2020) and The Nordic Edge: Policy Possibilities for Australia (MUP 2021). Ebony is a regular commentator and contributor across broadcast and print media, she appears regularly as a commentator on ABC and Sky News and has a fortnightly column in The Canberra Times.

The Australia Institute: Celebrating 30 years of Big Ideas

The Australia Institute is bringing some of the world’s brightest thinkers to Australia in 2024 to celebrate our 30th anniversary as the nation’s leading independent think tank. For 30 years the Australia Institute’s independent, non-partisan research has led the national policy debate with big ideas. The Australia Institute plays a critical role in shaping the national economic debate for a fairer society and economy—from our groundbreaking 1997 paper on better measuring wellbeing in Australia, The Genuine Progress Indicator, to the influential 2005 bookAffluenza (and later Curing Affluenza), to our cutting-edge research exposing the role of corporate profits in driving Australia’s post-pandemic inflation, to our influential work that helped reshape better fairer Stage 3 tax cuts—we have a track record of delivering research that shifts policy from the politically impossible into the inevitable.