Yan Chi Vinci Chow · CC BY 3.0

An economist whose 1970 paper on the used-car market, "The Market for Lemons," became one of the most cited works in the field by showing how markets can break down when sellers know more than buyers — a problem now central to how economists think about insurance, credit, and labor markets. The analysis of information asymmetry won him the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, shared with Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz. He has taught at Berkeley and Georgetown.