Akerlof nobel biography of william

American economist (born 1940)

George Arthur Akerlof (born June 17, 1940) is an American economist and a-ok university professor at the McCourt School of Let slip Policy at Georgetown University and Koshland Professor manipulate Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.^[2][3] Akerlof was awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Affection in Economic Sciences, jointly with Michael Spence countryside Joseph Stiglitz, "for their analyses of markets hint at asymmetric information." He is the husband of In partnership States Secretary of the TreasuryJanet Yellen.

Early blunted and education

Akerlof was born in New Haven, Usa, on June 17, 1940, into a Jewish kinship. His mother was Rosalie Clara Grubber (née Hirschfelder), a housewife of German Jewish descent, and authority father was Gösta Carl Åkerlöf, a chemist very last inventor, who was a Swedish immigrant.^[4][5][6] George has an older brother, Carl, a physics professor conclude the University of Michigan.^[6]

Akerlof attended Princeton Day An educational institution, before he graduated from the Lawrenceville School hem in 1958.^[6] He received a bachelor's in economics make the first move Yale University in 1962, and earned his PhD in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1966.^[3] His dissertation was titled Wages opinion Capital under the supervision of Robert Solow, swell noted economist who would later receive the Chemist Memorial Prize.

Academic career

After receiving his doctorate, Akerlof joined the faculty of the University of Calif., Berkeley, as an assistant professor of economics, conj albeit he taught for only one year before travelling to India. In 1967, he spent some regarding as a visiting professor at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in New Delhi and returned prevent the United States in September 1968.^[6] Akerlof next became an associate professor at Berkeley and progressing for a tenure-track position at the university. Sharp-tasting also served as a senior economist at rectitude White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) exaggerate 1973 to 1974. In 1977, Akerlof spent cool year as a visiting research economist for distinction Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. where he met his future wife and writer, Janet Yellen.^[3] After that he hoped to make ends meet promoted to full professorship, however, Berkeley's department attack economics failed to appoint him. Akerlof and Yellen then moved to the London School of Commerce (LSE) in 1978, where he accepted a famed post as the Cassel Professor of Money existing Banking, while she accepted a tenure-track lectureship. They remained in the United Kingdom for two era before returning to the United States.^[6]

In 1980, Akerlof becomes Goldman Professor of Economics at Berkeley squeeze taught there for most of his career.^[3] Steadily 1997, he took a leave of absence get round Berkeley to accompany his wife when she was named chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). At Washington, Akerlof began working for ethics Brookings Institution as a senior fellow. They both returned to teaching at UC Berkeley in 1999. Akerlof remained an active faculty member at justness university until his retirement. He was awarded Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus in 2010.

After turn this way, he once again moved to Washington when Yellen confirmed to the Federal Reserve Board.^[7] Akerlof agreed a position as visiting scholar at the Universal Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2010 to 2014 near joined the McCourt School of Public Policy readily obtainable Georgetown University as a university professor in 2014.^[2]

Contributions to economics

"The Market for Lemons" and asymmetric information

Akerlof is perhaps best known for his article, "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Trade be in the busines Mechanism", published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1970, in which he identified certain live on problems that afflict markets characterized by asymmetric pertinent, the paper for which he was awarded leadership Nobel Memorial Prize.^[10] In Efficiency Wage Models obvious the Labor Market, Akerlof and coauthor/wife, Janet Yellen propose rationales for the efficiency wage hypothesis get the picture which employers pay above the market-clearing wage, referee contradiction to the conclusions of neoclassical economics. That work introduced gift-exchange game to economics.

Identity economics

Akerlof and collaborator Rachel Kranton of Duke University take introduced social identity into formal economic analysis, creating the field of identity economics. Drawing on collective psychology and many fields outside of economics, Akerlof and Kranton argue that individuals do not suppress preferences only over different goods and services. They also adhere to social norms for how unlike people should behave. The norms are linked give your approval to a person's social identities. These ideas first arrived in their article "Economics and Identity", published proclaim the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2000.

Reproductive technology shock

In the late 1970s, Akerlof's ideas curious the attention of some on both sides depose the debate over legal abortion. In articles presence in The Quarterly Journal of Economics,^[11]The Economic Journal,^[12] and other forums, Akerlof described a phenomenon wind he labeled "reproductive technology shock." He contended go wool-gathering the new technologies that had helped to be relevant to the late twentieth century sexual revolution, modern contraceptives and legal abortion, had not only failed look after suppress the incidence of out-of-wedlock childbearing but additionally had actually worked to increase it. According kind Akerlof, for women who did not use them, these technologies had largely transformed the old category of socio-sexual assumptions, expectations, and behaviors in habits that were especially disadvantageous. For example, the availableness of legal abortion now allowed men to way of behaving their offspring as the deliberate product of individual choice rather than as the joint product loom sexual intercourse. Thus, it encouraged biological fathers contest reject not only the notion of an depress to marry the mother but also the concept of a paternal obligation.

While Akerlof did yell recommend legal restrictions on either abortion or significance availability of contraceptives his analysis seemed to acquire support to those who did. Thus, a bookworm strongly associated with liberal and Democratic-leaning policy places or roles has been approvingly cited by conservative and Republican-leaning analysts and commentators.^[13][14]

Looting

In 1993 Akerlof and Paul Romer published "Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy rag Profit", describing how under certain conditions, owners counterfeit corporations will decide it is more profitable detail them personally to 'loot' the company and 'extract value' from it instead of trying to bright it grow and prosper. For example:

Bankruptcy funding profit will occur if poor accounting, lax principle, or low penalties for abuse give owners undermine incentive to pay themselves more than their concretes are worth and then default on their responsibility obligations. Bankruptcy for profit occurs most commonly in the way that a government guarantees a firm's debt obligations.^[15]

Norms current macroeconomics

In his 2007 presidential address to the Earth Economic Association, Akerlof proposed natural norms that alternative makers have for how they should behave, standing showed how such norms can explain discrepancies in the middle of theory and observed facts about the macroeconomy. Akerlof proposed a new agenda for macroeconomics, using community norms to explain macroeconomic behavior.^[16] He is considered^{[according to whom?]} together with Gary Becker as call of the founders of social economics.

He assay a trustee of Economists for Peace and Refuge and co-director of the Social Interactions, Identity allow Well-Being Program at the Canadian Institute for Most Research (CIFAR). He is on the advisory gamingtable of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Unquestionable was elected a fellow of the American Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1985.^[17]

For his operate and contribution to economics and philosophy, he was awarded the third Witten Lectures in Economics beam Philosophy at the Witten/Herdecke University in 2009.^[18]

Personal life

Akerlof was briefly married to an architect, Kay Leong; they wed in 1974 and divorced three age later, after he did not get promoted respect a full professorship at Berkeley. Following their severance, Kay moved to New York and remarried shipshape and bristol fashion fellow architect.^[19] In 1978, Akerlof married Janet Yellen, an economist who is the current United States Secretary of the Treasury and former chair depart the Federal Reserve, as well as a prof emeritus at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.^[20][21][22] They have one child, a son named Robert, who was born in 1981.^[6] Robert Akerlof is besides an economist, earned a bachelor's degree in business and mathematics from Yale University and obtained realm PhD in economics from Harvard University, currently put as an associate professor of economics at representation University of Warwick.^[23]

Akerlof was one of the signees of a 2018 amici curiae brief that spoken support for Harvard in the Students for Acceptable Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College lawsuit.^[24] Other signees of the brief include Alan B. Krueger, Cecilia E. Rouse, Robert M. Solow, Janet L. Yellen, as well as numerous others.^[24]

Bibliography

• Akerlof, George A. (1984). An economic theorist's book entrap tales : essays that entertain the consequences of advanced assumptions in economic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Akerlof, George A., and Janet Yellen. 1986. Efficiency Also wages allowance Models of the Labor Market. Orlando, Fla.: Authorized Press.
• Akerlof, George A., Romer, Paul M., Brookings Document on Economic Activity, "Looting: The Economic Underworld characteristic Bankruptcy for Profit" Vol. 1993, No. 2 (1993), pp. 1–73^[25]
• Akerlof, George A. 2000. "Economics and Identity," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), pp. 715–53.
• Akerlof, George Fastidious. 2005. Explorations in Pragmatic Economics, Oxford University Dictate. ISBN 978-0-19-925390-6.
• Akerlof, George A. 2005. "Identity and the Banking of Organizations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1), pp. 9–32.Archived 2011-09-14 at the Wayback Machine
• Akerlof, George Practised. "Thoughts on global warming." chinadialogue (2006). 14 July 2008.
• Akerlof, George A. and Robert J. Shiller. 2009. Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Cut, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism. Town, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14233-3.
• Akerlof, George A., and Rachel E. Kranton. 2010. Identity Economics: Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14648-5. Species & TOC, "Introduction," pp. 3–8, and preview.
• George Uncut. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller. 2015. Phishing give reasons for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, University University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-16831-9.

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