The 2001 Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to George A. Akerlof, Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz ‘for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information’. These economists were not studying new kinds of markets, like electronic auctions, but drawing attention to features of ‘old’ markets that had been overlooked because they were thought insignificant.
Akerlof’s ancestors were Swedish and German. His father had gone from Sweden to the USA to study for a PhD and decided to stay. His mother was a chemistry student when she met her future husband — her family was of German Jewish descent and included some distinguished scientists. When Akerlof was born in 1940, his father was working at Yale University but the family moved around as he changed jobs.
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