My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.

He served on the Columbia faculty from 1947 to 1958. Stigler was a founding member of the Mont Pelerin Society and was president from 1976 to 1978. Another essay on "Truth in Teaching" described the consequences of a (fictional) set of court decisions that held universities legally responsible for the consequences of teaching errors.

Jacob Viner and Henry Simons also influenced him and among his students W. " The essay referenced studies that found many goods and services to be inelastic over the long run as well as offering a supposed theoretical proof; he ended by announcing that his next essay would demonstrate that the price system does not exist. He then spent one year at Brown University.