George A. Akerlof is the Koshland Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics.
Robert J. Shiller is the
New York Times bestselling author of
Irrational Exuberance and
The Subprime Solution. He is also the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management. This article is adapted from their new book,
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2009).
