Gary S. Becker
Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow

Expertise: Human capital, economics of the family, economic analysis of crime, discrimination and population

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Gary S. Becker, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science in 1992, is the Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and University Professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago.

Becker is recognized for his expertise in human capital, economics of the family, and economic analysis of crime, discrimination, and population.

His current research focuses on habits and addictions, formation of preferences, human capital, and population growth.

Becker is a featured monthly columnist for BusinessWeek magazine and served as an economic policy adviser for the Dole Presidential Campaign in 1996. He received the National Medal of Science in 2000 for his work in social policy. He is the 2004 recipient of the Jacob Mincer Prize for lifetime achievement in the field of labor economics and is one of the initial fellows of the Society of Labor Economists.

Becker's most recent publications include (with Guity Nashat) The Economics of Life (McGraw Hill, 1997) and Accounting for Tastes (Harvard University Press, 1996). He is the author of numerous books, including the seminal work Human Capital (Columbia University Press, 1964; 3d edition, 1993), which was awarded the prestigious W.S.Woytinskty Award in 1964.

Other books by Becker include A Treatise on the Family (Harvard University Press, 1981; expanded edition, 1991) and The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (University of Chicago Press, 1976).

Becker was editor of Essays in Labor Economics in Honor of H. Gregg Lewis and (with Gilbert Ghez) The Allocation of Time and Goods over the Life Cycle (Columbia University Press for the National Bureau of Economic Research, 1975).

His other professional activities include serving as a research associate of the Economics Research Center at the National Opinion Research Center (1980– ) and as an associate member of the Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy for the Ministry of Finance in Japan (1988– ).

In addition to being a Nobel laureate, Becker is a recipient of the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He holds honorary degrees from a dozen universities, including Hebrew University in Jerusalem (doctor philosophae honoris causa), Knox College, Illinois (doctor of laws), Princeton University (doctor of humane letters), Columbia University (doctor of humane letters), and the University of Illinois at Chicago (doctor of arts).

Becker was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1954 to 1957 and at Columbia University from 1957 to 1968. In 1968–1969 he was a Ford Foundation visiting professor of economics at the University of Chicago before joining the Department of Economics there in 1970.

Becker received an A.B. (summa cum laude) from Princeton University in 1951, an A.M. from the University of Chicago in 1952, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1955.