born June 17, 1940, New Haven, Conn., U.S.
U.S. economist.
He studied at Yale University (B.A., 1962) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1966) and in 1966 began teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, becoming Goldman Professor of Economics in 1980. Akerlof's research often drew on other disciplines, including psychology, anthropology, and sociology, and he played an important role in the development of behavioral economics. His landmark study on asymmetric information in the used car market demonstrated how markets malfunction when sellers have more information than buyers. Akerlof shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics with A. Michael Spence and Joseph E. Stiglitz .