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Gary Becker Quotes

1930–2014 United States

Gary Stanley Becker (December 2, 1930 – May 3, 2014) was an American economist and a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago. Described as “the most important social scientist in the past 50 years” by the New York Times, Becker was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.

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Random Gary Becker quote

6 quotes

The phrase ‘marriage market’ is used metaphorically and signifies that the mating of human populations is highly systematic and structured.

The bumping of lower-quality men out of their marriages through competitive reductions in the incomes of higher-quality men continues until the incomes of the lowest quality men are reduced to their single levels.

[A] revenue-neutral carbon tax would benefit all Americans by eliminating the need for costly energy subsidies while promoting a level playing field for energy producers.

[Gale and Shapley assumed that each person has] a given ranking [among] potential mates that determines rather than is determined by the equilibrium sorting.

Higher labor costs reduce employment. That is why President Clinton's proposal to raise the federal minimum wage should be rejected. A higher minimum will further reduce the employment opportunities of workers with few skills.

An efficient marriage market develops ‘‘shadow’’ prices to guide participants to marriages that will maximize their expected well-being. These prices, central to the analysis in this chapter and the subsequent one, are responsible for the more powerful implications found in these chapters than in traditional discussions of marriage. Some other approaches are evaluated in Chapter 4.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Gary Becker (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.