Contents:

Introduction: explorations in pragmatic economics.

Microeconomics. Macroeconomics.

I. Microeconomics:

1. The market for lemons: quality uncertainty and the market mechanism/George A. Akerlof.

2. The economics of caste and of the Rat Race and other Woeful tales/George A. Akerlof.

3. Discriminatory, status-based wages among tradition-oriented, stochastically trading coconut producers/George A. Akerlof.

4. Economics and identity/George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton.

5. The economics of tagging as applied to the optimal income tax, welfare programs, and manpower planning/George A. Akerlof.

6. An analysis of out-of-wedlock childbearing in the united states/George A. Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen and Michael L. Katz.

7. Men without children/George A. Akerlof. 8. The economic consequences of cognitive dissonance/George A. Akerlof and William T. Dickens.

9. The economics of illusion/George A. Akerlof.

10. Procrastination and obedience/George A. Akerlof.

11. Looting: the economic underworld of bankruptcy for profit/George A. Akerlof and Paul M. Romer.

II. Macroeconomics:

12. Relative wages and the rate of inflation/George A. Akerlof.

13. The microeconomic foundations of a flow of funds theory of the demand for money/George A. Akerlof.

14. Irving fisher on his head: the consequences of constant threshold-target monitoring on money holdings/George A. Akerlof.

15. Jobs as Dam sites/George A. Akerlof.

16. Labor contracts as partial gift exchange/George A. Akerlof.

17. The fair wage-effort hypothesis and unemployment/George A. Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen.

18. A near-rational model of the business cycle, with wage and price inertia/George A. Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen.

19. The macroeconomics of low inflation/George A. Akerlof, William T. Dickens and George L. Perry.

20. Behavioral macroeconomics and macroeconomic behavior/George A. Akerlof. Index.

"For twenty years since the publication of his seminal paper 'The market for "Lemons", George A. Akerlof's work has changed the way economics is seen and understood, in particular, the economics of information. In abandoning the perfect-competition benchmarks of classical economics, the pragmatic modern economics championed by Akerlof has provided deep insights into markets, identity, discrimination, motivation and work, and into behavioural economics in general.

This collection of Akerlof's significant papers co-authored with eminent economists is divided into two broad areas, micro-and macroeconomics.

They cover:

the economics of information

the theory of unemployment

macroeconomic equilibria

the demand for money

economics and psychology

the nature of discrimination and other social issues

The collection closes with Akerlof's 2001 nobel lecture, in which he argues that it is imperative macroeconomics be considered inherently behavioural. The author's substantial introduction to this volume tells the story of these papers, connecting them and showing how his later work has built upon early contributions. In many cases he improves upon their arguments, their subtlety, and their usefulness today. This volume will interest students of economics, researchers, and academics in the field." (jacket)