Gary Becker

Gary Stanley Becker (born December 2, 1930) is an American economist. A professor at the University of Chicago, he won the 1992 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for "having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including non-market behavior". He is also a member of the Hoover Institution and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, he earned a B.A. at Princeton University in 1951 and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1955. He taught at Columbia University from 1957 to 1968, and then returned to Chicago, where he still teaches price theory to the new graduate students each year. He won the John Bates Clark Medal in 1967. Gary Becker was one of the first economists to branch into what were traditionally considered topics belonging to sociology, including racial discrimination, crime, family organization, and drug addiction. He is known for arguing that many different types of human behavior can be seen as rational and utility maximizing. He is also among the foremost exponents of the study of human capital. Among others, colleague Steven Levitt is often seen as following in Becker's footsteps of applying economic theory to unusual subjects.

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According to the Nobel Prize citation, his work can be categorized into four areas:

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• investments in human capital
• behavior of the family (or household), including distribution of work and allocation of time in the family
• crime and punishment
• discrimination on the markets for labor and goods.

Usually considered politically conservative, he wrote a monthly column for Business Week from 1985 to 2004, alternating with liberal Princeton economist Alan Blinder. In December 2004, Becker started a joint weblog with Judge Richard Posner.

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Gary Becker: Major Works ►



 

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