A Nobel prize-winner is to advise public sector finance chiefs on ways out of the current downturn. Professor Joseph Stiglitz, former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics, will open the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) annual conference in Manchester on 24 June . Also addressing the conference will be former government strategist, Alastair Campbell; director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson; and polling guru, Ben Page, of Ipsos MORI.