Stiglitz dissects the relationship between price rigidities and market structure.

Stiglitz dispels traditional notions that competition increases welfare.

Stiglitz elaborates on equilibrium in product markets with imperfect information.

Recent turmoil in international financial markets has raised a set of fundamental questions for the global community: Is the set of international financial arrangements, established after the Great Depression and World War II and modified after the abandonment of the gold standard in 1973, up to the challenges of the twenty-first century? Are minor modifications such as slight changes in the governance of the international financial institutions, increased transparency, or surveillance! all that is required to adapt these institutions to the needs of modern economies, or are more fundamental changes necessary? Today, although much has been proposed, discussed, and argued, no consensus on desirable changes has yet been reached. In the meantime, what can countries, especially the poor, the small, and the less developed, do to protect themselves from the seeming ravages of storms brought on by international financial instability?

There are, of course, a number of

This paper uses a variant of the standard search model to examine market equilibrium and the consequences of an increase in the number of firms. If marginal search costs increase with the number of searches, then the demand curve facing any firm will be kinked, with the elasticity of demand with respect to price decreases being less than with respect to price increases; prices may not change in response to changes in marginal costs. As the number of firms increases, the maximum price that is consistent with equilibrium increases to the monopoly price, but the minimum price decreases. On the other hand, if marginal search costs decrease with the number of searches, equilibrium, if it exists, is characterized by a price distribution.