Gary Becker

Gary Stanley Becker (December 2, 1930 ~ May 3, 2014) was an American economist. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. 

Becker was one of the first economists to study topics that were usually researched in sociology. He studied family organization in new and interesting ways. He studied racial discrimination, crime, and rational addiction. He said that many different types of human behavior that seem self-destructive or irrational can be seen as rational and utility-maximizing. He also studied altruism in human behavior. He showed that sometimes altruism was really to help oneself. He was a strong supporter of studying human capital. According to Milton Friedman, he was "the greatest social scientist who has lived and worked" in the second part of the twentieth century.Catherine Rampell. "Gary Becker, an economist who changed economics"Washington Post May 5, 2014

Becker was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Gary Becker died in Chicago, Illinois from complications of ulcer surgery, aged 83.

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