Economist couple of the week: George Akerlof & Janet Yellen

Choosing my first 'economist power couple' wasn't hard. Both are famous and influential West-coasters. Berkeley professor George Akerlof won the Nobel Prize in 2001, while his partner Janet Yellen, Berkeley professor, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and President of the San Francisco Fed, must surely outdo him in clout.

Although Akerlof is best known for his article, "The Market for Lemons", their most famous joint work was on efficiency wages.

Akerlof describes how they met in his autobiography, prepared for the Nobel prize:

In between Berkeley and the LSE I spent a year at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., where I met Janet Yellen. We liked each other immediately and decided to get married. Not only did our personalities mesh perfectly, but we have also always been in all but perfect agreement about macroeconomics. Our lone disagreement is that she is a bit more supportive of free trade than I.

We decided to get married hastily, not only because we had so little doubt about each other, but also for practical reasons. I had already accepted a professorship at the LSE for the coming year and if we were to avoid being separated, Janet would also need to get a job in England too. Luckily, she also was given a tenure-track lectureship at the LSE. There seemed to be no question about her tenure since she had already published several distinguished articles on the economics of bundling and advertising.

After a year in Washington, we left for England. We very much liked both the LSE and London, but both of us had problems of identity: we were American, not English. Luckily, Berkeley had never accepted my proffer of resignation when I left for the LSE, so I was still nominally on the faculty. And Janet got a tenure-track job in the business school with a promise of early review for tenure.

We had met at the Fed in the Fall of 1977, married in June 1978, and left for the LSE in September of that year. We came back to Berkeley in August 1980. Shortly thereafter, in June 1981, our son Robert was born.

A decisive couple, clearly. But not identical. A 1997 Business Week article on Yellen describes their different personal styles:

In academic circles, Yellen and Akerlof -- who met in 1977 as young Fed economists and were married the next year--have won acclaim for the originality of their research, to say nothing of their clout. ...colleagues say Akerlof often comes up with breakthrough ideas, but it is Yellen who supplies the academic rigor. Akerlof ''is more interested in the inspiration than the hard work of putting it together in a professionally plausible form--he's off to the next idea,'' says Tobin. ''She provides the discipline that makes them go.''

Nominations welcome for next week's economist couple.

Comments

[Alex M Thomas]

Definitely THE couple. :)

[insider]

Susan Athey and Guido Imbens, now both at Harvard.

So is by the way Robert Akerlof, this week's couple's son (he's a phd student)

[Fellow Traveler]

How about Christina and David Romers, another dynamic duo from UCB?

[Richard Schwindt]

I nominate Charles Blackorby and Margaret Slade, University of British Columbia

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