The Importance of Economics

Gary Becker (1930 –  2014) was an American economist who helped to spread economics into fields of social science, such as sociology, demography and criminology. Becker undertook economic analysis in areas such as racial discrimination, the incentives of crime, drug addiction and family relationships. Becker also helped to popularise and develop the concept of human capital.

Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (1992) for “having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour”