(1911–91), American economist and Nobel laureate. Born on Jan. 17, 1911, in Renton, Wash., he was educated at the University of Washington, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1938. Between 1936 and 1981, he taught at several U.S. universities, including the University of Minnesota (1938-46), Columbia University (1947–58) and the University of Chicago (1958–81). At Chicago he founded in 1977 the Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.

Stigler's areas of research included price theory, the role of information in market processes, and the effects of public regulation. He argued that regulation lacks observable effects and ultimately does not serve the best interests of the general public. Stigler wrote The Theory of Price (1946), an influential microeconomics textbook; The Economics of Information (1961); and several monographs for the National Bureau of Economic Research on labor supply and demand. His many later papers concerned markets and industrial structures, a field known also as industrial organization; the effect of government regulation of industry; and the history of economic ideas.

In 1982 Stigler was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences for “his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets, and causes and effects of public regulation.” Well regarded for his ability to explain ideas to the layperson, he also wrote less technical books, such as The Economist as Preacher (1982), The Intellectual and the Marketplace (1984), and his Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist (1988).

Stigler died on Dec. 1, 1991, in Chicago.