The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1992
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Gary S. Becker
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1992
Born: 2 December 1930, Pottsville, PA, USA
Died: 3 May 2014, Chicago, IL, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Prize motivation: “for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour”
Prize share: 1/1
Life
Gary Becker was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, USA. He was educated at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1955. In 1957-70 he taught at Columbia UnIversity, before returning to the University of Chicago as a professor of economics. From 1985-2004, Becker served as a columnist for the international business news publication Business Week.
Work
Gary Becker applied economic theories and approaches to areas that had previously only been addressed in sociology, demography, and criminology. Becker's starting point was that actors act rationally to maximize specific goals, like advantage or wealth. In the 1950s and 1960s he applied his models in several areas: investments in people's competence (or human capital), behavior in households and families, crime and punishment, and discrimination in labor and other markets.
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
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