Profile Major Works Resources

George A. Akerlof, 1940-

George A. Akerlof was one of the pioneers of asymmetric information, famed for his 1970 article on "lemons" demonstrating the unraveling of a market due to information problems (specifically, adverse selection).  He has also been a major contributor to New Keynesian macroeconomics, introducing modifications like price and wage stickiness as optimal responses to fluctuations, but detrimental to overall adjustment.. 

George Akerlof won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 2001, alongside fellow information pioneers Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz.  

Akerlof is married to Janet Yellen, a frequent co-writer and currently (since 2014) chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

 

  


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Major Works of George A. Akerlof

  • "Relative Wages and the Rate of Inflation", 1969, QJE.
  • "The Market for ‘Lemons’: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism", 1970, QJE. [pdf]
  • "The Demand for Money: A general equilibrium inventory-theoretic approach", 1973 RES
  • "The Economics of Caste and of the Rat Race and Other Woeful Tales", 1976, QJE.
  • "The Microfoundations of a Flow of Funds Theory of the Demand for Money", 1978, JET
  • "The Economics of 'Tagging' as applied to the optimal income tax, welfare programs and manpower planning", 1978 AER. [pdf]
  • "Irving Fisher on his Head: The consequences of constant target-threshold monitoring for the demand for money", 1979, QJE.
  • "Unemployment durations and unemployment experience", with B.G.M. Main, 1980, AER.
  • "Irving Fisher on his Head II: The consequence of the timing of payments for the demand for money" with R. Milbourne, 1980, QJE.
  • An Economic Theorist's Book of Tales, 1984
  • "Can Small Deviations from Rationality Make Significant Differences to Economic Equilibria?" with Janet Yellen, 1985, AER.
  • "The Implicit Contract Theory of Unemployment meets the Wage Bill Argument", with H. Miyazaki, 1980, RES
  • "Jobs as dam sites", 1981, RES,
  • "An Experience-weighted Measure of Employment and Unemployment Durations", with B.G.M. Main, 1981 AER.
  • "Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange", 1982, QJE.
  • "The Economic Consequences of Cognitive Dissonance" with W.T. Dickens, 1982, AER.
  • "Discriminatory Status-Based wages among Tradition-oriented Stochastically-based Coconut Producers", 1985, JPE.
  • "A Near Rational Model of the Business Cycle with Wage and Price Inertia", with J. Yellen, 1985, QJE.
  • Efficiency Wage Models of the Labour Market, with Janet Yellen, 1986
  • "Job-Switching and Job Satisfaction in the United States", with A. Rose and J.Yellen, 1988, BPEA.
  • "Workers’ trust funds and the logic of wage profiles", with L. Kattz, 1989, QJE.
  • "The Fair Wage Hypothesis and Unemployment", with J.Yellen, 1990, QJE.
  • "East Germany in from the Cold: The economic aftermath of currency union" with A.Rose, J.Yellen, and H. Hessenius, 1991, BPEA.
  • "Looting: The economic underworld of bankruptcy for profit" with Paul M. Romer, 1993, BPEA [pdf]
  • "The Macroeconomics of Low Inflation", with W.T. Dickens and G.L. Perry, 1996, BPEA.
  • "An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States", with J. Yellen and Michael Katz, 1996, QJE
  • "Men without Children", 1998, EJ.
  • "Economics and Identity", with R. Kranton, 2000, QJE [pdf]
  • "Near-rational Wage and Price Setting and the Optimal Rates of Inflation and Unemployment", with W.T. Dickens and G.L. Perry, 2000, BPEA.
  • "Behavioral Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Behavior", 2001 (2002, AER) [nobel]
  • Explorations in Pragmatic Economics, 2005
  • "Identity and the Economics of Organizations", with R. Kranton, 2005, JEP [aea]
  • Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, with Robert Shiller, 2009
  • Identity Economics, with R. Kranton, 2010
  • Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception with Robert J. Shiller, 2015

 


HET

 

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Resources on  George Akerlof

  • George Akerlof's faculty page at Berkeley
  • George Akerlof faculty page at Georgetown
  • Akerlof page at Brookings Institution
  • 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize website: facts, autobiography, lecture
  • Akerlof papers at repec/ideas
  • "George Akerlof" from New Palgrave [draft pdf]
  • "A Nobel Prize for Asymmetric Information: the economic contributions of George Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz", by J. Barkley Rosser, 2003, ROPE
  • "An Interview with George Akerlof", 2009, The Atlantic [online]
  • "Janet Yellen’s Husband on Men, Marriage, and the Family" 2013 Institute for Family Studies [online]
  • "Everything you need to know about Mr. Janet Yellen", 2014, Time [online]
  • Akerlof entry in  Concise Encycl of Economics, LibertyFund
  • Akerlof entry in Jewish virtual library
  • Akerlof entry at Britannica
  • Wikipedia

 

 
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