The Economic Approach

"As an economist and a public intellectual, Gary Becker was a giant. He won a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work in human capital, the John Bates Clark Medal as the best American economist under 40, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to public life and welfare. He is regarded by many as the greatest microeconomist in the field's history. After a 44-year career at the University of Chicago, Becker left a slew of manuscripts, projects, and speeches that were half-formed or never published. These papers offer glimpses both of his famed process and of the personality-direct, critical, curious-that make him a beloved figure in economics and far beyond. An Economic Approach collects and annotates these extant unpublished works as a capstone to the Becker oeuvre-not because the works are perfect, but because they offer an illuminating and deeply instructive glimpse into the mind and process of an economist who was always on. Longtime collaborator Richard Posner once described Becker a marathon runner of economic thought-forever chasing a big finish line, never stopping at artificial milestones along the way. An Economic Approach carries the flame of a great mind that was never motivated by publications, but whose spirit of inquiry will be forever relevant"--