Eighteenth lecture

Professor Akerlof received the Nobel Prize, along with colleagues Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz, for his research on asymmetric information. His seminal paper in this area was his “Market for Lemons” study which deals with the market for defective used cars (‘lemons”) but has widespread applications in other areas.


In his lecture Dr. Akerlof is expected to focus how the sense of “who people are and how they think they should behave” can affect economic outcomes. These ideas incorporate the psychology and sociology notion of “identity” in challenging mainstream assumptions about human behavior in economic analysis. For example, the inclusion of identity in models of gender discrimination in the workplace, the economics of poverty and social exclusion, and the household division of labor, can lead to significantly different conclusions from earlier economic analysis.