Globalization and Its Discontents is a book published in 2002 by the 2001 Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz. The title is a reference to Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents.

The book draws on Stiglitz's personal experience as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Bill Clinton from 1993 and chief economist at the World Bank from 1997. During this period Stiglitz became disillusioned with the IMF and other international institutions, which he came to believe acted against the interests of impoverished developing countries. Stiglitz argues that the policies pursued by the IMF are based on neoliberal assumptions that are fundamentally unsound:

Behind the free market ideology there is a model, often attributed to Adam Smith, which argues that market forces—the profit motive—drive the economy to efficient outcomes as if by an invisible hand. One of the great achievements of modern economics is to show the sense in which, and the conditions under which, Smith's conclusion is correct. It turns out that these conditions are highly restrictive. Indeed, more recent advances in economic theory—ironically occurring precisely during the period of the most relentless pursuit of the Washington Consensus policies—have shown that whenever information is imperfect and markets incomplete, which is to say always, and especially in developing countries, then the invisible hand works most imperfectly. Significantly, there are desirable government interventions which, in principle, can improve upon the efficiency of the market. These restrictions on the conditions under which markets result in efficiency are important—many of the key activities of government can be understood as responses to the resulting market failures.

Stiglitz argues that IMF policies contributed to bringing about the 1997 Asian financial crisis, as well as the 1998–2002 Argentine great depression. Also noted was the failure of Russia's conversion to a market economy and low levels of development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Specific policies criticised by Stiglitz include fiscal austerity, high interest rates, trade liberalization, and the liberalization of capital markets and insistence on the privatization of state assets.

The theories which guide the IMF's policies are empirically flawed. Free market, neoclassical, and neoliberal are all essentially euphemisms for the disastrous laissez-faire economics of the late 19th century. This approach seeks to minimize the role of government—arguing that lower wages solve problems of unemployment, and relying upon trickle-down economics (the belief that growth and wealth will trickle down to all segments of society) to address poverty. Stiglitz finds no evidence to support this belief, and considers the 'Washington Consensus' policy of free markets to be a blend of ideology and bad science.

Joseph Stiglitz was awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with George Akerlof and Michael Spence) for demonstrating how information affects markets. Without equal access to information between employer and employee, company and consumer, or (in the IMF's case) lender and debtor, there is no chance of "free" markets operating efficiently. (This explanation also owes much to the earlier Nobel work of Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu.)

Stiglitz explains that globalization could be either success or failure, depending on its management. There is a success when it is managed by national government by embracing their characteristics of each individual country; however, there is a failure when it is managed by international institutions such as IMF.

Globalization is beneficial under the condition that the economic management operated by national government and the example is East Asian countries. Those countries (especially South Korea and Taiwan) were based on exports through which they were able to close technological, capital and knowledge gaps. By managing national pace of change and speed of liberalization on their own, those countries were able to achieve economic growth. The countries who received the benefits from the globalization shared their profits equally.