Akerlof & Yellen Met in the Cafeteria at the Federal Reserve & Married After Less Than a Year

 

• From Heavy.com

 

Akerlof and Yellen’s love story began in a cafeteria at the Federal Reserve. In 1977, Yellen was working as a research economist for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. According to the Washington Post, Yellen accepted the job after she was denied tenure at Harvard University, where she taught from 1971 to 1976.

Akerlof was temporarily working for the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. As Reuters reported, Akerlof had been assigned to the organization’s research division. He and Yellen first crossed paths in the Fed’s cafeteria during the fall of 1977 and it didn’t take long for sparks to fly.

Yellen and Akerlof tied the knot in June 1978, less than a year after meeting. Akerlof had accepted a position at the London School of Economics and wanted Yellen to come with him. He explained their whirlwind romance to the Nobel Foundation:

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.

Yellen and Akerlof moved to England in September 1978. They returned to California in August 1980, where Akerlof was still on the faculty at UC Berkeley. Yellen also became a full professor at the university.

The Couple’s Son, Robert, Became an Economics Professor

Akerlof and Yellen have one child together. Their son, Robert Akerlof, was born in June 1981. Robert followed in his parents’ footsteps and pursued a career in economics.

The younger Akerlof earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University before choosing MIT as the place to conduct his postdoctoral research. He currently is an associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick, which is located in Coventry, England. According to his faculty bio, Robert Akerlof’s research is focused on social interaction.

George Akerlof may have reflected on his own fatherly experience when he was writing his 1998 research paper “Men Without Children.” As the Institute for Family Studies summarized, Akerlof theorized that marriage and fatherhood helped men to “settle down.” He wrote that “marriage begins a period in which men devote themselves to the acquisition of human capital whose returns will later be used to support the marriage.” The Institute for Family Studies reported that in the paper, Akerlof also cited evidence that “low marriage rates contribute to single men’s elevated rates of crime, drug addiction, unemployment, mortality, and other problems.”