George A. Akerlof

A winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, along with Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz, for his theory of information asymmetry as expressed in his famous 1970 paper, “The Market for Lemons,” which discusses imperfect information in the market for used cars. He is also well known for his efficiency wage hypothesis, which suggests that wages are determined by the efficiency goals of employers in addition to supply and demand forces.

Akerlof is an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley; he also taught briefly at the London School of Economics. He was born in Connecticut in 1940 and earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Akerlof’s research focuses on macroeconomics, monetary theory and behavioral economics.