Joseph E. Stiglitz is one of the world's most famous economists. He is a professor at Columbia University and was chief economist for the World Bank from 1997 to 2000. In 2001, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, together with George A. Akerlof and A. Michael Spence, for his work concerning markets with asymmetric information. Stiglitz holds an honorary doctorate at WU. Inequality is at the center of Stiglitz’s research. He presented his book, "The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them" at WU on November 29, 2015.

The Center for Students of Economics (VW-Zentrum), the Department of Economics at WU, in cooperation with the research institute Economics of Inequality and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)  hosted this public lecture with a subsequent panel discussion.