Stigler, George Joseph (1911-1991), an American economist, contributed to the study of the economics of information–an important area for understanding how economic markets behave. He also studied the effects of government regulation of economic affairs and came to believe that regulation usually harmed the interests of the consumer. In 1982, Stigler was awarded the Nobel Prize for economic sciences for his research into industrial organization, markets, and government regulation.
During the 1950’s, Stigler proposed a method of determining the most efficient sizes of business enterprises. In 1961, he wrote the essay The Economics of Information, which examined how prices of goods varied under conditions that economic theory claimed would yield a single price.
Stigler was born in Renton, near Seattle. He attended the University of Washington in that city and Northwestern University in Chicago. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1938. He later taught at several American universities, including Columbia and Chicago. In 1963, Stigler was appointed distinguished service professor of American Institutions at Chicago. In 1977, he founded the Center for the Study of the Economy and the State at the University of Chicago.
