Photo: Yan Chi Vinci Chow / CC BY 3.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
George Akerlof is living proof that a single elegant idea can reshape an entire discipline. 'The Market for Lemons' is one of those papers that sounds almost too simple once you read it, yet it cracked open the whole field of information economics and earned him a Nobel. What I admire is how grounded his thinking stays in human behavior; later work like Identity Economics and Animal Spirits pushed against the cold rational-actor model in ways that feel ahead of their time. The fact that he and Janet Yellen are an economics power couple is just a fun bonus. A genuine intellectual heavyweight who never lost sight of the real world.
Overview
George Akerlof (born June 17, 1940) is an American economist and professor, a recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which he shared with Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information. He is best known for his 1970 paper 'The Market for Lemons,' a foundational work on how information asymmetry affects markets. He has been a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Georgetown University, and is married to fellow economist Janet Yellen.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- George Akerlof
- Name (Japanese)
- ジョージ・アカロフ
- Reading
- じょーじ・あかろふ
- Born
- June 17, 1940 (age 85)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Gemini / Dragon
- Origin
- New Haven, Connecticut, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- Economist / Professor
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- Private
- University
- Yale University
Awards & achievements
- 1973 Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
- 2006 Global Economy Prize
- 1979 Fellow of the Econometric Society
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
Economist — see all → · Professor — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-02
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.