George Akerlof
Program
Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being
Appointment
Fellow, Co-Director (SIIWB); Fellow (IOG)
Institution
University of California at Berkeley
Country
USA 
George Akerlof is a Nobel Laureate, the Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of The Brookings Institution. He is co-Director of CIFAR's Social Interactions, Identity & Well-Being Program, as well as a member of the Institutions, Organizations & Growth Program. Dr. Akerlof received his B.A. from Yale University in 1962 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1966. The same year that he completed his doctoral studies, Dr. Akerlof began his career at Berkeley. He held a Visiting Professorship at the Indian Statistical Institute in 1967-68, and was a Research Associate at Harvard University during the summer of 1969. From 1973-74, Dr. Akerlof served as a Senior Staff Economist for the Council of Economic Advisors, and in 1977-78, he was a Visiting Research Economist in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He was also the Cassel Professor with respect to Money and Banking at the London School of Economics from 1978-80.
Dr. Akerlof is currently Associate Editor of Economics and Politics, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. He is a Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Roundtable on Behavioral Economics, and an Associate of the Group on Values and Norms of the MacArthur Initiative on Economics. He is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Akerlof was Vice-President of the American Economic Association from 1995-96. In 2008, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.
Dr. Akerlof was a co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, together with A. Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz, "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information." He also recently received two Honorary Doctorates: one from the University of Zurich in 2000, and the other from the University of Antwerp in 2001.
Dr. Akerlof’s most important research initiative in recent years has involved bringing a new point of view into economics. This point of view incorporates into economic thinking some of the most important concepts in classical sociology, including identity, prescriptions (or norms), ideal types, and social categories (or reference groups). These same concepts have their counterpart and experimental validation in social psychology.
By ignoring these concepts, economists have neglected to see a wide range of important policy options that aim to change how people think of themselves. This variable of identity has a major role to play in many subfields of economics. These include the economics of education, of gender, of income distribution (including the place of disadvantaged minorities), of politics, of substance abuse, of unions, of fertility, and of politics. Dr. Akerlof has written a lengthy paper with Rachel Kranton at the University of Maryland, called “Economics and Identity,” which was published in August 2000 in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Drs. Akerlof and Kranton are currently preparing a follow-up to that paper, entitled “The Economics of Education: A New Perspective.”
Dr. Akerlof is currently Associate Editor of Economics and Politics, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. He is a Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Russell Sage Foundation Roundtable on Behavioral Economics, and an Associate of the Group on Values and Norms of the MacArthur Initiative on Economics. He is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Akerlof was Vice-President of the American Economic Association from 1995-96. In 2008, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.
Dr. Akerlof was a co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, together with A. Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz, "for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information." He also recently received two Honorary Doctorates: one from the University of Zurich in 2000, and the other from the University of Antwerp in 2001.
Dr. Akerlof’s most important research initiative in recent years has involved bringing a new point of view into economics. This point of view incorporates into economic thinking some of the most important concepts in classical sociology, including identity, prescriptions (or norms), ideal types, and social categories (or reference groups). These same concepts have their counterpart and experimental validation in social psychology.
By ignoring these concepts, economists have neglected to see a wide range of important policy options that aim to change how people think of themselves. This variable of identity has a major role to play in many subfields of economics. These include the economics of education, of gender, of income distribution (including the place of disadvantaged minorities), of politics, of substance abuse, of unions, of fertility, and of politics. Dr. Akerlof has written a lengthy paper with Rachel Kranton at the University of Maryland, called “Economics and Identity,” which was published in August 2000 in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Drs. Akerlof and Kranton are currently preparing a follow-up to that paper, entitled “The Economics of Education: A New Perspective.”