Gary Becker's Impact on Economics and Policy

摘要

It is impossible in a few pages to even touch on the impact Gary Becker had on economics and public policy. Becker was a pioneer whose work spanned many fields, most of which he was responsible for creating. His imagination was limitless, and he applied economics to areas that few would have thought feasible, providing insight, innovation, and reason in every direction he went. Milton Friedman described him as the most important social scientist of the second half of the twentieth century, and the description is not an overstatement. Becker was more than an economist. He was a social thinker who could bring logic to any subject, no matter how unapproachable. It is for that reason that he had such an important impact on public policy. Becker's seemingly heretical work often reversed stereotypic thoughts and provided approaches to public policy that were not only novel-they were correct. Based on economic theory and empirical analyses that backed it up, Becker provided prescriptions that were both practical and welfare enhancing. Above all, Becker was a scholar in the finest sense of the word, who believed in economics and its power to explain the world. The ultimate economic imperialist, Becker's real-world orientation gave us new ways to think about economics and its application to policy.