Joseph Stiglitz has a Nobel Prize. Not in physics or chemistry or medicine or any of the hard sciences we generally think of when we think of the world’s top recognition for smart people. The award for the native of Gary, Ind., back in aught one, was for economics — technically the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences — also known as “the dismal science.”
As Stiglitz explained to an audience at the University of Utah Thursday evening, a big difference between his science and a lot of those others is that the laws that govern physics and chemistry don’t change.