Book George Akerlof

George Akerlof is an American economist and a leading thinker on how markets behave when buyers and sellers know different things. In 2001 he received the Nobel prize in economics, shared with Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence, honoring research on markets with asymmetric information, ideas that reshaped how economists understand imperfect markets. Akerlof is an university professor at Georgetown's McCourt School of Public Policy and holds emeritus status as Berkeley's Koshland Professor of Economics, and he has also taught at the London School of Economics. Earlier in his career he served as a senior economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisers and spent time as a visiting researcher at the Federal Reserve Board. He helped found the Institute for New Economic Thinking and co-wrote the popular books Animal Spirits (2009) and Phishing for Phools, both exploring the psychology behind economic decisions. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship (1973) and the Global Economy Prize (2006). As a speaker he makes deep economic ideas clear, human and surprisingly entertaining.