George Arthur Akerlof (born June 17, 1940) is an American economist and Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics (shared with Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz).

The Market for Lemons and Asymmetric Information
 

Akerlof is perhaps best known for his article, "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism", published in Quarterly Journal of Economics in 1970, in which he identified certain severe problems that afflict markets characterized by asymmetrical information, the paper for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. In Efficiency Wage Models of the Labor Market, Akerlof and coauthor Janet Yellen (his wife) propose rationales for the efficiency wage hypothesis in which employers pay above the market-clearing wage, in contradiction to the conclusions of neoclassical economics.

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

Reproductive technology shock
In the late 1990s Akerlof's ideas attracted the attention of some on both sides of the debate over legal abortion. In articles appearing in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Economic Journal, and other forums Akerlof described a phenomenon that he labeled "reproductive technology shock." He contended that the new technologies that had helped to spawn the late twentieth century sexual revolution, modern contraceptives and legal abortion, had not only failed to suppress the incidence of out-of-wedlock childbearing but also had actually worked to increase it. According to Akerlof, for women who did not use them, these technologies had largely transformed the old paradigm of socio-sexual assumptions, expectations, and behaviors in ways that were especially disadvantageous. For example, the availability of legal abortion now allowed men to view their offspring as the deliberate product of female choice rather than as the chance product of sexual intercourse. Thus, it encouraged biological fathers to reject not only the notion of an obligation to marry the mother but also the very idea of a paternal obligation.

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.

Looting
In 1993 Akerlof and Paul Romer brought forth 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. IE:

"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."
 
Yves Smith argues in her book "Econned" that Akerlof and Romer's "Looting" theory applies to the subprime mortgage crisis and the Financial crisis of 2007-2010. She argues that the 'Looted' companies in this case are banks and others who were 'looted' by certain traders and executives within those companies.

Address to American Economic Association
In his 2007 presidential Address to the American Economic Association, Akerlof proposed natural norms that decision makers have for how they should behave. In this lecture Akerlof proposed a new agenda for macroeconomics with inclusion of those norms.

He is a trustee of the 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 in 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.

Personal life

 
Akerlof speaking at Warwick Economics Summit, 2012
 

Akerlof was born in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, the son of Rosalie (née Hirschfelder) and Gosta Akerlof, who was a chemist and inventor. His mother was Jewish, from a family that had immigrated from Germany. His father was a Swedish immigrant. Akerlof graduated from the Lawrenceville School from which he received the School's highest award (the Lawrenceville Medal) in 2002, and received his B.A. degree from Yale University in 1962, and his Ph.D. degree from MIT in 1966, and has taught at the London School of Economics. His wife Janet Yellen is the current Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, and was the former President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and former Chair of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors. His son Robert Akerlof  is currently a postdoctoral associate in Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Professor Akerlof has spoken at many distinguished events, including Warwick Economics Summit in February 2012 with a talk entitled "Phishing for Phools".