George Akerlof
George Akerlof | |
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Born | George Arthur Akerlof June 17, 1940 New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
Education | Yale University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD) |
Spouses |
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Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) |
Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Academic background | |
Thesis | Wages and capital (1966) |
George Arthur Akerlof (born June 17, 1940) is an American economist and a university professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley.[2][3] Akerlof was awarded the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, jointly with Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz, "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information."
Early life and education
Akerlof was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 17, 1940, into a Jewish family. His mother was Rosalie Clara Grubber (née Hirschfelder), a housewife of German Jewish descent, and his father was Gösta Carl Åkerlöf, a chemist and inventor, who was a Swedish immigrant.[4][5][6] George has an older brother, Carl, a physics professor at the University of Michigan.[6]
Akerlof attended Princeton Day School, before he graduated from the Lawrenceville School in 1958.[6] He received a bachelor's in economics from Yale University in 1962, and earned his PhD in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1966.[3] His dissertation was titled Wages and Capital under the supervision of Robert Solow, a noted economist who would later receive the Nobel Memorial Prize.
Academic career
After receiving his doctorate, Akerlof joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, as an assistant professor of economics, although he taught for only one year before moving to India. In 1967, he spent some time as a visiting professor at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in New Delhi and returned to the United States in September 1968.[6] Akerlof then became an associate professor at Berkeley and voted for a tenure-track position at the university. He also served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 1973 to 1974. In 1977, Akerlof spent a year as a visiting research economist for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. where he met his future wife and coauthor, Janet Yellen.[3] After that he hoped to be promoted to full professorship, however, Berkeley's department of economics failed to appoint him. Akerlof and Yellen then moved to the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1978, where he accepted a prestigious post as the Cassel Professor of Money and Banking, while she accepted a tenure-track lectureship. They remained in the United Kingdom for two years before returning to the United States.[6]
In 1980, Akerlof becomes Goldman Professor of Economics at Berkeley and taught there for most of his career.[3] In 1997, he took a leave of absence from Berkeley to accompany his wife when she was named chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). At Washington, Akerlof began working for the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow. They both returned to teaching at UC Berkeley in 1999. Akerlof remained an active faculty member at the university until his retirement. He was awarded Koshland Professor of Economics Emeritus in 2010.
After that, he once again moved to Washington when Yellen confirmed to the Federal Reserve Board.[7] Akerlof received a position as visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2010 to 2014 and joined the McCourt School of Public Policy at 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, "
Identity economics
Akerlof and collaborator
Reproductive technology shock
In the late 1970s, Akerlof's ideas attracted the attention of some on both sides of the debate over legal
While Akerlof did not recommend legal restrictions on either abortion or the availability of contraceptives his analysis seemed to lend support to those who did. Thus, a scholar strongly associated with liberal and Democratic-leaning policy positions 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 for Profit", describing how under certain conditions, owners of corporations will decide it is more profitable for them personally to 'loot' the company and 'extract value' from it instead of trying to make it grow and prosper. For example:
Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations. Bankruptcy for profit occurs most commonly when a government guarantees a firm's debt obligations.[15]
Norms and macroeconomics
In his 2007 presidential address to the
He is a trustee of Economists for Peace and Security and co-director of the Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). He is on the advisory board of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985.[17]
Personal life
Akerlof was briefly married to an architect, Kay Leong; they wed in 1974 and divorced three years later, after he didn’t get promoted to a full professorship at Berkeley. Following their divorce, Kay moved to New York and remarried a fellow architect.[18] In 1978, Akerlof married Janet Yellen, an economist who is the current United States Secretary of the Treasury and former chair of the Federal Reserve, as well as a professor emeritus at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.[19][20][21] They have one child, a son named Robert, who was born in 1981.[6] Robert Akerlof is also an economist, earned a bachelor's degree in economics and mathematics from Yale University and obtained his PhD in economics from Harvard University, currently working as an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick.[22]
Akerlof was one of the signees of a 2018 amici curiae brief that expressed support for Harvard in the
Bibliography
- Akerlof, George A. (1984). An economic theorist's book of tales : essays that entertain the consequences of new assumptions in economic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Akerlof, George A., and Janet Yellen. 1986. Efficiency Wage Models of the Labor Market. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press.
- Akerlof, George A., Romer, Paul M., Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, "Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit" Vol. 1993, No. 2 (1993), pp. 1–73[24]
- Akerlof, George A. 2000. "Economics and Identity," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(3), pp. 715–53.
- Akerlof, George A. 2005. Explorations in Pragmatic Economics, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-925390-6.
- Akerlof, George A. 2005. "Identity and the Economics of Organizations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(1), pp. 9–32. Archived 2011-09-14 at the Wayback Machine
- Akerlof, George A. "Thoughts on global warming." chinadialogue(2006). 14 July 2008.
- Akerlof, George A. and ISBN 978-0-691-14233-3.
- Akerlof, George A., and
- George A. Akerlof and ISBN 978-0-691-16831-9.
See also
References
- ^ Akerlof, George (1966). Wages and capital (PDF) (Ph.D.). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved June 28, 2017.
- ^ )
- ^ a b c d Laviola, Erin (May 11, 2021). "Janet Yellen's Husband, George Akerlof: 5 Fast Facts". heavy.com. Archived from the original on March 28, 2022. Retrieved May 12, 2021.
- ISBN 9780691003764. Retrieved 2014-10-25.
- ISBN 9780309028882. Retrieved 2014-10-25.
- ^ a b c d e f George Akerlof on Nobelprize.org "The Princeton Country Day School ended at grade nine. At that point most of my classmates dispersed among different New England prep schools. Both for financial reasons and also because they preferred that I stay at home, my family sent me down the road to the Lawrenceville School."
- ^ Thompson, Marilyn W.; Spicer, Jonathan (September 29, 2013). "A Fed love story: Janet Yellen meets her match". reuters.com. Archived from the original on November 25, 2020. Retrieved September 30, 2013.
- ^ Writing the “The Market for ‘Lemons’”: A Personal and Interpretive Essay by George A. Akerlof
- ^ "Citations of Akerlof: The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism". Google Scholar. Archived from the original on 2012-07-23. Retrieved 2009-07-07.
- S2CID 11777041
- JSTOR 2565562
- ^ Failed Promises of Abortion, archived from the original on 2008-10-12
- ^ The Facts of Life & Marriage
- ISBN 978-0-230-62051-3pp. 164–165
- ^ The Missing Motivation in Macroeconomics
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter A" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved April 6, 2011.
- ^ Luscombe, Belinda. "Everything You Need to Know About Mr. Janet Yellen". Time. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
- ^ "Janet Yellen Fast Facts". CNN. December 3, 2020. Archived from the original on December 4, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
- ^ "Janet Yellen Fact Sheet | Berkeley-Haas". newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu. 2013-09-25. Retrieved 2014-10-25.
- ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved January 10, 2014.
- ^ "Robert Akerlof Resume" (PDF). robertakerlof.com. Archived (PDF) from the original on April 13, 2021. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
- ^ a b "Amicus brief - Economics Professors" (PDF). harvard.edu. Harvard University. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 3, 2022. Retrieved October 2, 2022.
- ^ George A. Akerlof and Paul M. Romer (23 December 2007). "Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-02-20. Retrieved 2014-10-25.
External links
Official
- George A. Akerlof at Georgetown University
- George A. Akerlof at University of California, Berkeley
- George Akerlof on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Prize Lecture December 8, 2001 Behavioral Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Behavior
- Identity Economics Archived 2014-03-12 at the Wayback Machine
Other
- Biography at Encyclopædia Britannica
- Profile and Papers at Research Papers in Economics/RePEc
- "George A. Akerlof (1940– )". Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd ed.). Liberty Fund. 2008.
- Articles
- Akerlof's criticism of Bush, February 12, 2003
- Akerlof slams Bush government, July 29, 2003