Gary S. Becker

Bio: Gary S. Becker is an academic researcher from University of Chicago. The author has contributed to research in topics: Human capital & Consumption (economics). The author has an hindex of 94, co-authored 227 publications receiving 135183 citations. Previous affiliations of Gary S. Becker include Columbia University & EAFIT University.

Reversal of Misfortune When Providing for Adversity

Abstract: Often an economic agent dissatisfied with an endowed distribution of utilities desires to optimize this distribution by transferring income or resources across individuals or states of the world. This multi-state optimization theme recurs in a wide variety of economic contexts, ranging across taxation and income distribution, international trade andmarket disruption, labor contracts and unemployment insurance, Rawlsian design of social contracts, provision for retirement, and many others.Because analyses of such topics are frequently so context driven, the generality of this theme seems to have gone unnoticed and, of a particular paradoxical result, unappreciated. Lump-sum re-distribution or perfect and fair insurance in a first best environment will reverse the preference rankings of the endowed distribution of utilities – after redistribution the originally ‘bad’ outcomes become preferred to originally better ones.

Crime and punishment: An economic approach,

Abstract: Since the turn of the twentieth century, legislation in Western countries has expanded rapidly to reverse the brief dominance of laissez faire during the nineteenth century. The state no longer merely protects against violations of person and property through murder, rape, or burglary but also restricts ‘discrimination’ against certain minorities, collusive business arrangements, ‘jaywalking’, travel, the materials used in construction, and thousands of other activities. The activities restricted not only are numerous but also range widely, affecting persons in very different pursuits and of diverse social backgrounds, education levels, ages, races, etc. Moreover, the likelihood that an offender will be discovered and convicted and the nature and extent of punishments differ greatly from person to person and activity to activity. Yet, in spite of such diversity, some common properties are shared by practically all legislation, and these properties form the subject matter of this essay.

Is Voting Rational or Instrumental

Abstract: A fully rational choice approach to politics does not closely resemble modern models of voting behavior that purport to be applications of the economists analysis of rationality to the political sector. For these models do not build voting choices on the fragility of preferences about how to vote, which we show to be a basic implication of the voters paradox. Building a simple model on the fragility of preferences about how to vote delivers an number of different and realistic implications for the demand for public policies and political candidates, the supply of public policies and political candidates, and, ultimately, the determinants of public policy. The model explains why so many studies have found voters not voting in their (narrowly defined) self-interest, why minorities are not exploited under majoritarian voting, why interest groups have an important influence on public policy, why public decisions are so weakly correlated with voting rules, and why conformity is more common in political than private life.

Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital

Abstract: In this paper, the concept of social capital is introduced and illustrated, its forms are described, the social structural conditions under which it arises are examined, and it is used in an analys...

Forms of Capital

Abstract: The social world is accumulated history, and if it is not to be reduced to a discontinuous series of instantaneous mechanical equilibria between agents who are treated as interchangeable particles, one must reintroduce into it the notion of capital and with it, accumulation and all its effects. Capital is accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated,’ embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor. It is a vis insita, a force inscribed in objective or subjective structures, but it is also a lex insita, the principle underlying the immanent regularities of the social world. It is what makes the games of society – not least, the economic game – something other than simple games of chance offering at every moment the possibility of a miracle. Roulette, which holds out the opportunity of winning a lot of money in a short space of time, and therefore of changing one’s social status quasi-instantaneously, and in which the winning of the previous spin of the wheel can be staked and lost at every new spin, gives a fairly accurate image of this imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, in which every moment is perfectly independent of the previous one, every soldier has a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can become anything. Capital, which, in its objectified or embodied forms, takes time to accumulate and which, as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or expanded form, contains a tendency to persist in its being, is a force inscribed in the objectivity of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible. And the structure of the distribution of the different types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time represents the immanent structure of the social world, i.e. , the set of constraints, inscribed in the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way, determining the chances of success for practices.

The mechanics of economic development

Abstract: This paper considers the prospects for constructing a neoclassical theory of growth and international trade that is consistent with some of the main features of economic development. Three models are considered and compared to evidence: a model emphasizing physical capital accumulation and technological change, a model emphasizing human capital accumulation through schooling, and a model emphasizing specialized human capital accumulation through learning-by-doing.