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).
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 the severe problems that may afflict markets characterized by asymmetrical information.
In economics, information asymmetry occurs when one party to a transaction has more or better information than the other party. (It has also been called asymmetrical information). Typically it is the seller that knows more about the product than the buyer, however, it is possible for the reverse to be true: for the buyer to know more than the seller.
