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Date of Birth
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02-December-1930
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Place of Birth
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Pottsville
(Pennsylvania, Schuylkill County)
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Nationality
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United States of America
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Also know as
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Gary Stanley Becker, Gary S. Becker
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Profession
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Economist, Scientist, Professor
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Gary Stanley Becker is an American economist. He is a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago and a professor at the Booth School of Business. He has important contributions to the family economics branch within the economics. Neoclassical analysis of family within the family economics is also called new home economics. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. He is currently a Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, located at Stanford University.
Becker was one of the first economists to branch into what were traditionally considered topics belonging to sociology, including racial discrimination, crime, family organization, and drug addiction. He is known for arguing that many different types of human behavior can be seen as rational and utility maximizing. His approach can include altruistic behavior by defining individuals' utility appropriately. He is also among the foremost exponents of the study of human capital. Becker is also credited with the "rotten kid theorem." He is married to Guity Nashat, a historian of the Middle East whose research interests overlap his own.
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