Stigler was born in Seattle, Washington, the son of Elsie Elizabeth and Joseph Stigler. He was of German descent and spoke German in his childhood. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1931 with a BA and then spent a year at Northwestern University from which he obtained his MBA in 1932. It was during his studies at Northwestern that Stigler developed an interest in economics and decided on an academic career.
Career
After he received a tuition scholarship from the University of Chicago, Stigler enrolled there in 1933 to study economics and went on to earn his Ph.D. in economics there in 1938. He taught at Iowa State College from 1936 to 1938. He spent much of World War II at Columbia University, performing mathematical and statistical research for the Manhattan Project. He then spent one year at Brown University. He served on the Columbia faculty from 1947 to 1958. At Chicago, he was greatly influenced by Frank Knight, his dissertation supervisor. Milton Friedman, a friend for over 60 years, commented that it was remarkable for Stigler to have passed his dissertation under Knight, as only three or four students had ever managed to do so in Knight's 28 years at Chicago. Stigler's influences included Jacob Viner and Henry Simons as well as students W. Allen Wallis and Friedman. Stigler is best known for developing the Economic Theory of Regulation, also known as capture, which says that interest groups and other political participants will use the regulatory and coercive powers of government to shape laws and regulations in a way that is beneficial to them. This theory is a component of the public choice field of economics but is also deeply opposed by public choice scholars belonging to the "Virginia School," such as Charles Rowley. He also carried out extensive research in the history of economic thought. Stigler's most important contribution to economics was published in his landmark article, "The Economics of Information." According to Friedman, Stigler "essentially created a new area of study for economists." Stigler stressed the importance of information: "One should hardly have to tell academicians that information is a valuable resource: knowledge is power. And yet it occupies a slum dwelling in the town of economics." His 1962 article "Information in the Labor Market" developed the theory ofsearch unemployment. In 1963 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He was known for his sharp sense of humor, and he wrote a number of spoof essays. In his book The Intellectual and the Marketplace, for instance, he proposed Stigler's Law of Demand and Supply Elasticities: "all demand curves are inelastic and all supply curves are inelastic too." The essay referenced studies that found many goods and services to be inelastic over the long run and offered a supposed theoretical proof; he ended by announcing that his next essay would demonstrate that the price system does not exist. Another essay, "A Sketch on the Truth in Teaching," described the consequences of a set of court decisions that held universities legally responsible for the consequences of teaching errors. The Stigler diet is also named after him. Stigler wrote numerous articles on the history of economics, published in the leading journals and republished 14 of them in 1965. The American Economic Review said, "many of these essays have become such well-known landmarks that no scholar in this field should be unfamiliar with them.... The lucid prose, penetrating logic, and wry humor... have become the author's trademarks." In 1962, Stigler wrote an article, "The Problem of the Negro", where he argued that the leaders of the black community performed "a terrible disservice to identify the white man as the main obstacle to the rise of the negro", denouncing it as "false as a guide to improvement" because "it must lead to hatred, and hatred to violence". He argued that white people frequently avoided blacks as neighbors, not because of racism, but because of a "rapid rise in crime and vandalism" that may follow. He cited a partial explanation of black unemployment due to "Lacking education, lacking a tenacity of purpose, lacking a willingness to work hard, he will not be an object of employers' competition". Stigler proposes that the solution to persistent low income and social issues of the black community lies not in state programs, but in fostering "an unquenchable thirst for knowledge in the Negro youth" and encouraging "the love of knowledge and the willingness to work hard". Stigler was a founding member of the Mont Pelerin Society and was its president from 1976 to 1978. He was conservative. He received National Medal of Science in 1987.
