Gary Becker Quotations

Why in almost all societies have married women specialized in bearing and rearing children and in certain agricultural activities, whereas married men have done most of the fighting and market work?

Still, intuitive assumptions about behavior is only the starting point of systematic analysis, for alone they do not yield many interesting implications.

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.

My work on human capital began with an effort to calculate both private and social rates of return to men, women, blacks, and other groups from investments in different levels of education.

Fines are preferable to imprisonment and other types of punishment because they are more efficient. With a fine, the punishment to offenders is also revenue to the State.

The Treatise tries to analyze not only modern Western families, but also those in other cultures and the changes in family structure during the past several centuries.

The analysis assumes that individuals maximize welfare as they conceive it, whether they be selfish, altruistic, loyal, spiteful, or masochistic. Their behavior is forward-looking, and it is also consistent over time.

The amount of crime is determined not only by the rationality and preferences of would-be criminals, but also by the economic and social environment created by public policies, including expenditures on police, punishments for different crimes, and opportunities for employment, schooling, and training programs.

Is it fair or wise to place strict controls on legal immigration when little is done to stem illegal entry? Preference should be given to younger persons who will get jobs and are likely to make a long-term commitment to the country, such as the many men and women who want to study at American universities.

That's what we teach all freshmen -- that investors and workers and everyone else in an economy respond in an important way to incentives, including tax incentives.

A literature has developed on whether discrimination in the marketplace due to prejudice disappears in the long run. Whether employers who do not want to discriminate will eventually compete away all discriminating employers depends not only on the distribution of tastes for discrimination among potential employers, but critically also on the nature of firm production functions.

A stronger yuan could lead to greater Chinese asset accumulation in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The most fundamental constraint is limited time

A stronger yuan could lead to greater Chinese asset accumulation in the U.S. and elsewhere.

I argued last year on my shared blog that selling the right to immigrate would be the best approach to legal immigration. Among other benefits, the revenue from immigrants' payments could reduce taxes. Paying for the right to immigrate would also negate the argument that immigrants get a free ride when they gain health care and other benefits. Moreover, making immigrants pay would attract the type of immigrants who came much earlier in American history: young men and women who are reasonably skilled and want to make a long-term commitment to the United States.

Different constraints are decisive for different situations, but the most fundamental constraint is limited time.

Human capital analysis starts with the assumption that individuals decide on their education, training, medical care, and other additions to knowledge and health by weighing the benefits and costs. Benefits include cultural and other non-monetary gains along with improvement in earnings and occupations, while costs usually depend mainly on the foregone value of the time spent on these investments.

Economy is the art of making the most of life.

Even a wizard would have a great deal of difficulty repealing the economic law that higher minimum wages reduce employment. Since politicians are not wizards, they should not try.

I am saying that the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behaviour

Along with others, I have tried to pry economists away from narrow assumptions about self interest. Behavior is driven by a much richer set of values and preferences.