Nobel Prize winner economist, Gary Becker, dies at 83

Gary Becker, one of the century’s greatest economists, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Sciences, died on Saturday, at the venerable age of 83.

Becker, professor of sociology and economics at the University of Chicago is highly praised for extending economics to a higher level that includes sociological factors such as crime, marriage and education.

In 1992, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Becker the Nobel prize in economics ‘for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including nonmarket behavior.’

Becker’s beliefs were that people employ a cost-benefit assessment in their decision making process and don’t always pursuit personal gain. Such an example is when criminals calculate benefits of a successful robbery against the risk of being caught and punished.