Fireside Chat with Professor Joseph Stiglitz:

Debate Between Professor Walden Bello and Professor Edward Ashbee

This special event was co-hosted by Committee of 100 and the Foreign Policy Association, and featured a fireside chat with Professor Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University) followed by a debate between two leading experts: Professor Walden Bello (State University of New York at Binghamton and Kyoto University) and Professor Edward Ashbee (Copenhagen Business School). The discussion was moderated by Peter Young (Committee of 100 Member and Board Member, CEO of Young & Partners).

Is the current movement towards deglobalization just part of a cycle that has had its ups and downs, or are we in a structural movement towards a more permanent isolation of countries from a trade and economic point of view?

The topic of deglobalization has never been more prominent than it is today. The topic has been elevated in importance for some time now as we have seen dramatic changes in country trade practices, relative manufacturing and service strengths, economic trends, and political positions. The tariff situation brought about by the U.S. recently has made it even more consequential today.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joseph Stiglitz opened with a fireside chat on the evening’s central issue, followed by a lively debate between two leading experts: Professor Walden Bello, credited with coining the term “deglobalization,” and Professor Edward Ashbee. They presented opposing views in a traditional debate format—opening statements, rebuttals, and closing remarks.

The audience voted electronically before and after the debate to see how opinions shift.

Professor Joseph Stiglitz
University Professor
Columbia University

Professor Joseph Stiglitz received his PhD from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970, and in 1979 was awarded the John Bates Clark Award, given biennially by the American Economic Association to the economist under 40 who has made the most significant contribution to the field. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and was the Drummond Professor and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is now University Professor at Columbia University in New York. He is also the Co-Founder and Co-President of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia and Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2011, Time named Stiglitz one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

He now chairs a High Level Expert Group at the OECD. In 2009, he was appointed by the President of the United Nations General Assembly as chair of the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System, which also released its report in September 2009 (published as The Stiglitz Report). Since the 2008 financial crisis, he has played an important role in the creation of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), which seeks to reform the discipline so it is better equipped to find solutions to the great challenges of the 21st century.

Stiglitz helped create a new branch of economics, “The Economics of Information,” which have become standard tools not only of theorists, but of policy analysts. He has made major contributions to macroeconomics and monetary theory, development economics and trade theory, public and corporate finance, theories of industrial organization and rural organization, and theories of welfare economics and income and wealth distribution. In the 1980s, he helped revive interest in the economics of R&D.

His book Globalization and Its Discontents (W.W. Norton, 2001) was translated into 35 languages and sold more than one million copies worldwide.

Professor Walden Bello
International Adjunct Professor of Sociology
State University of New York at Binghamton

Professor Walden Bello is concurrently the International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Kyoto University, and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.

He has written regularly about the issue of deglobalization and has emerged as one of the leading critics of the current model of economic globalization and the international case against corporate-driven globalization.

He is the author or co-author of 25 books, including Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right (Fernwood, 2019), Paper Dragons: China and the Next Crash (Bloomsbury/Zed, 2019), Food Wars (Verso, 2009), Capitalism’s Last Stand? (Zed, 2013), Dragons in Distress: Asia’s Miracle Economies in Crisis (Penguin, 1990), and Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines (Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1982).

Bello received his BA from the Ateneo de Manila University in 1966 and his PhD in Sociology from Princeton University in 1975.

He received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in Stockholm in 2003 for his work showing the negative impact of corporate-driven globalization. He was also named Outstanding Public Scholar by the International Studies Association in San Francisco in 2008. He has honorary doctorates from Panteion University in Athens (2006) and Murdoch University in Perth (2012).

Professor Edward Ashbee
Professor in the Department of International Economics, Government and Business
Copenhagen Business School

Professor Edward Ashbee is Professor in the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at Copenhagen Business School. His books include Deglobalization (Agenda Publishing, 2024), Countering China: US Responses to the Belt and Road Initiative (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2023), and US Politics Today (Manchester University Press, 4th edition, 2019). He was recently appointed to be the Danish Head of the Educational Programme for Public Management and Social Development.

In his most recent book Deglobalization, published in 2024, Ashbee examines the globalizing processes of the past thirty years and considers the extent to which there has been “deglobalization” or “slowbalization” and the reasons for these apparent shifts.

The book looks at the original promise held out by globalizing trends which became fully evident at the same time as the dot.com economy became part of everyday life. The book then charts the backlash against “globalism” and the ways in which it became pronounced across much of Europe, North America, and Asia. And it asks how far has that backlash, together with the 2008 financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the rise of “techno-nationalism” led to a stalling or even reversal in globalizing processes.

The analysis disaggregates the different trends that collectively constitute “globalization” and surveys competing perspectives on globalization and reviews the arguments of those who argue that the concept is either myth or hyperbole.

Peter Young
CEO and President
Young & Partners  

Peter Young is CEO and President of Young & Partners, a boutique corporate strategy and investment banking firm focused on the life science and chemical industries. He manages the firm and is actively involved in client projects, transactions, and financings. Under his leadership, Young & Partners has established and maintained its position as a highly regarded firm serving the corporate strategy, M&A, restructuring, and financing needs of clients worldwide. He was previously head of industry groups at Salomon Brothers, Schroders, and Lehman Brothers, a senior private equity executive with J.H. Whitney & Co., and a senior member of Bain & Co., a corporate strategy firm.   

Young received a BA in Economics from Yale, an MS in Accounting from NYU, and an MBA from Harvard Business School where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. He is a CPA and a Chartered Global Management Accountant. He serves on several boards of directors, both corporate and non-profit; and is a board member of Société de Chimie Industrielle, a leading life science and chemical industry non-profit organization; and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Pharmaceutical Executive. He is also the New York Regional Chair for Committee of 100.