Gary Becker received his doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel prize in Economics in 1992 for "having extended the domain of economic theory to aspects of human behavior which had previously been dealt with,if at all, by other social science disciplines such as sociology, demography and criminology". He was the president of the American Economic Association in 1987.

The economic effects of dicrimination was of great interest to him. According to Becker, there is an inverse relationship between the level of discrimination and the level of competition that exists for an industry. The reason being, of course, is that discrimination is costly to the discriminator.

It was Becker and Theodore Shultz who developed the concept of human capital, which today is considered as important a variable in the production function as is labour ,capital, and R&D. He made extensive use of the economic approach to explain a my riad of decisions individuals make in their private lives.

Works by Gary Stanley Becker:

Human Capital

The Economics of Discrimination

Treatise on the Family