Gary Becker (1930–2014)
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Who They Were
Gary Becker (1930-2014) was an American economist associated above all with the University of Chicago. He built his reputation by extending economic reasoning far beyond conventional markets, into areas of human behaviour that economists had not previously modelled in those terms. Where earlier work confined the discipline to prices, firms and trade, Becker applied the assumption of rational choice to decisions about education, crime, discrimination and family life, arguing that individuals weigh costs and benefits even in these non-market settings. This program was initially controversial but proved enormously influential, opening whole new fields of applied microeconomics. In 1992 he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction. He remained an active researcher and commentator throughout his career.
Key Contributions
Becker showed that the tools of microeconomics, such as rational choice, costs and benefits, and investment and returns, could illuminate decisions well outside conventional markets. He developed the concept of human capital, treating education and training as investments that raise a person's future productivity and earnings. He analysed crime as a rational response to expected penalties and rewards, discrimination as something with measurable economic costs, and family decisions about marriage, childbearing and the allocation of time as economic choices. This economic approach to human behaviour reframed subjects long thought to belong to sociology or other disciplines. Though controversial at first, his methods became standard across applied economics and influenced fields from labour economics to the study of the family. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1992 for extending microeconomic reasoning to areas such as education, crime and family decisions.
On EconRecall
American economist and 1992 Nobel laureate who extended microeconomic analysis to education, crime, discrimination and the family. Play the games that feature Gary Becker: