Its an economics paper written by Akerlof in 1970, and "is the single most important study in the literature on economics of information. It has the typical features of a truly seminal contribution – it addresses a simple but profound and universal idea, with numerous implications and widespread applications."
What is interesting is Akerlof's "Personal Interpretive Essay."
By June of 1967 the paper was ready and I sent it to The American Economic Review for publication. I was spending the academic year 1967-68 in India. Fairly shortly into my stay there, I received my first rejection letter from The American Economic Review. The editor explained that the Review did not publish papers on subjects of such triviality. In a case, perhaps, of life reproducing art, no referee reports were included.
Michael Farrell, an editor of The Review of Economic Studies, had visited Berkeley in 1966-67, and had urged me to submit “Lemons” to The Review, but he had also been quite explicit in giving no guarantees. I submitted “Lemons” there, which was again rejected on the grounds that the The Review did not publish papers on topics of such triviality.
The next rejection was more interesting. I sent “Lemons” to the Journal of Political Economy, which sent me two referee reports, carefully argued as to why I was incorrect. After all, eggs of different grades were sorted and sold (I do not believe that this is just my memory confusing it with my original perception of the egg-grader model), as were other agricultural commodities. If this paper was correct, then no goods could be traded (an exaggeration of the claims of the paper). Besides — and this was the killer — if this paper was correct, economics would be different.
He then "sent the paper off to the Quarterly Journal of Economics, where it was accepted."
Is this trivial or non-trivial?
The fact is, the paper won George Akerlof the Nobel Prize in Economics.
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