January 2023
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106 Reads
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1 Citation
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Publications (139)
January 2021
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30 Reads
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2 Citations
Why has government grown in so many countries during the twentieth century? We present a simple model of political competition and show how different sources of the growth of government have different effects on the amount and structure of taxes, spending, and regulatory programs undertaken by the government. Those sources include: demographic shifts, more efficient taxes, more efficient spending, a shift in the “political power” from those taxed to those subsidized, shifts in political power among taxed groups, and shifts in political power among subsidized groups. We also show how the effects of each source varies according to the model of public decision-making. Based on a variety of empirical indicators of regulation, we suggest that regulation has grown from 1890 to 1990, but less rapidly than tax revenues. Regulation grew more slowly during the 1980s and, according to some measures, declined. We suggest that the long term regulatory and budgetary trends are consistent with growth in the political power of those subsidized—especially the elderly. The 1980s decline in regulation together with its growth in taxes is not consistent with any one of the theories of government growth.
October 2018
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264 Reads
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136 Citations
Journal of Political Economy
We study the link between market forces, cross-sectional inequality, and intergenerational mobility. Emphasizing complementarities in the production of human capital, we show that wealthy parents invest, on average, more in their offspring than poorer ones. As a result, economic status persists across generations even in a world with perfect capital markets and without differences in innate ability. In fact, under certain conditions, successive generations of the same family may cease to regress toward the mean. We also consider how short-and long-run mobility are affected by changes in the returns to human capital.
December 2017
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395 Reads
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8 Citations
A fully rational choice approach to politics does not closely resemble modern models of voting behavior that purport to be applications of the economists analysis of rationality to the political sector. For these models do not build voting choices on the fragility of preferences about how to vote, which we show to be a basic implication of the voters paradox. Building a simple model on the fragility of preferences about how to vote delivers an number of different and realistic implications for the demand for public policies and political candidates, the supply of public policies and political candidates, and, ultimately, the determinants of public policy. The model explains why so many studies have found voters not voting in their (narrowly defined) self-interest, why minorities are not exploited under majoritarian voting, why interest groups have an important influence on public policy, why public decisions are so weakly correlated with voting rules, and why conformity is more common in political than private life.
January 2017
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86 Reads
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3 Citations
January 2017
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122 Reads
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4 Citations
February 2016
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98 Reads
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37 Citations
Journal of Labor Economics
We consider the link between parents’ influence over the preferences of children, parental investments in children’s human capital, and children’s support of elderly parents. It may pay for parents to spend resources to “manipulate” children’s preferences in order to induce them to support their parents in old age. Since parents invest more in children when they expect greater support, manipulation of child preferences may end up helping children and parents.A new result, which we call the “Rotten Parent Theorem,” demonstrates that if children are altruistic, then even selfish parents will make the optimal investment in their children’s human capital.
October 2015
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45 Reads
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1 Citation
Socio
Bernard E. Harcourt Nous allons aborder principalement la theorie economique du crime et du châtiment de Gary Becker (1968), et l’analyse par Foucault du travail de Becker dans le cours du 21 mars 1979 (Foucault, 2004 : 245-270). Nous en profiterons pour explorer d’une maniere profonde la relation entre, d’une part, les textes de Foucault sur la penalite (de La Societe punitive, cours de 1972-1973 [Foucault, 2013] a Surveiller et punir en 1975, jusqu’a La Naissance de la biopolitique [Foucaul...
January 2015
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163 Reads
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55 Citations
SSRN Electronic Journal
We develop a model of intergenerational resource transmission that emphasizes the link between cross-sectional inequality and intergenerational mobility. By drawing on first principles of human capital theory, we derive several novel results. In particular, we show that, even in a world with perfect capital markets and without differences in innate ability, wealthy parents invest, on average, more in their offspring than poorer ones. As a result, persistence of economic status is higher at the top of the income distribution than in the middle. Successive generations of the same family may even cease to regress towards the mean. Moreover, we demonstrate that government interventions intended to ameliorate inequality may in fact lower intergenerational mobility—even when they do not directly favor the rich. Lastly, we consider how mobility is affected by changes in the marketplace.
September 2014
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57 Reads
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4 Citations
Socio
Le débat intitulé \guillemotleft~American neoliberalism & Michel Foucault's 1979 birth of biopolitics lectures: A conversation with Gary Becker, François Ewald, and Bernard Harcourt~\guillemotright s'est tenu à l'université de Chicago le 9~mai 2012. Bernard E. Harcourt Bienvenue à tous. Je viens de lire dans les journaux que plusieurs universités \textendash~Harvard, MIT, Princeton, et Stanford~\textendash ont commencé à mettre en ligne des cours gratuits ouverts à tous. Il s'agit donc aujourd'hui de notre première contribution à cet effo...
Citations (82)
... Among scholars concluding that Keynes was far off in his 'prophesy' regarding standard work-leisure choices by 2030, the following kinds of contentions may be distinguished: first, insatiable relative needs and ratchet effects (Frank 2008;Skidelsky 2009;Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2012;Leijonhufvud 2008); second, the modern working rich and the pleasures of working (Becchetti 2008;Becker and Rayo 2008;Freeman 2008;Phelps 2008); third, pervasive and growing inequality (Friedman 2008(Friedman , 2017Solow 2008;Stiglitz 2008); and fourth, the lasting benefits of capitalism and entrepreneurship (Fitoussi 2008;Phelps 2008). ...
- Citing Chapter
July 2008
... The present article investigates how important the vocabulary size of a potential partner is for marital choice. Our theoretical framework is mainly that of biological markets (Becker 1976, et passim), which are still being widely used (Becker et al. 2023). This framework assumes that human decisions are made on a rational basis, e.g., about the characteristics that a potential partner brings into a marriage such as economic assets (wealth, education), psychological traits (intelligence, kindness, fairness), or signs that show physical and mental health (see Becker 2007). ...
- Citing Book
January 2023
... Policy interventions can promote farmers' participation in DWS by increasing their marginal benefits, default costs, and raising their perception of waste separation (Owusu et al., 2013;Kil et al., 2014;Boonrod et al., 2015;Loan et al., 2017;Xu et al., 2018;Wang et al., 2019). In addition, it has been found that due to the neighborhood effects, the impacts of exogenous policies are no longer confined to specific individuals, but rather "reverberate" among certain groups, generating a social multiplier effect that amplifies the effects of public policies (Becker, 1974;Becker and Murphy, 2000). Therefore, this paper proposes the following hypothesis. ...
- Citing Book
January 2000
... Yet, stated preferences for these social goods are confounded by individuals' beliefs (whether they are accurate or not) about the correlations between income levels, income equality, and income mobility (Corak, 2013;Becker et al., 2018;Alesina et al., 2020), undermining our understanding of public opinions for these social goods. ...
- Citing Article
October 2018
Journal of Political Economy
... Both supplyside and demand-side factors drive adoption decisions (Hall and Khan, 2003), but several contributions have placed particular emphasis on the complementarities between tangible and intangible capital (Rosenberg, 1976;OECD, 2011), conditional on firm demographic characteristics such as firm size and age, as well as on the implementation of different practices in the management of human resources (Bloom et al., 2012). Human capital theory (Becker, 1994) posits that human capital is accumulated through investments in education and through training as the two main routes to improve the provision of labor services by employees. In many instances, there are clear trade-offs between the two forms of investments, and changing the composition of labor inputs, whose returns vary depending on their specific skills content (Acemoglu, 2002;Link and Siegel, 2003), might be preferable to investments in onthe-job training. ...
- Citing Book
January 1993
... Instead, a portion of the population loses their life -and consumer surplus. Becker, Murphy and Topel (2010) use the framework provided by the economic literature on the value of a statistical life (VSL), which measures people's willingness to pay for a reduction in the probability of death that would save one 'statistical life'. For example, if in a population of 10,000 individuals each would be willing to pay $600 a year to reduce the per-annum probability of accidental death by one in 10,000, then VSL = $6 million. ...
- Citing Chapter
May 2013
... Алкоголь -классический пример аддиктивного блага, потребление которого увеличивается по мере формирования привычки. Выбор потребителя может характеризоваться как рациональный или как «близорукий», в зависимости от того, осознает ли он возможные последствия [Becker, Murphy, 1988;Becker et al., 1994]. Особенность алкоголя как экономического блага также в том, что он оказывает влияние не только на самого пьющего, но и на других людей. ...
- Citing Chapter
January 2017
... Habits, and especially addiction, have a large influence on price responsiveness (Becker et al., 2017). In the short run, consumers show small elasticities to price increases for goods that are purchased habitually and frequently, as the psychological cost of switching to cheaper substitutes is perceived as larger than the additional cost of the preferred good. ...
- Citing Chapter
January 2017
... Finalmente, el modelo asume que un "bajo costo del maltrato" incrementa la vulnerabilidad de los menores. En particular, siguiendo teorías de toma de decisiones racionales (e.g., Becker, Ewald, y Harcourt, 2013), en el caso del maltrato un "bajo costo", evidenciado principalmente por existir una baja probabilidad de identificar y reprender a los maltratadores, hace que este problema sea más prevalente. Por el contrario, un "alto" costo del maltrato, expresado por un buen sistema de monitoreo para identificar y reprender a los maltratadores puede desincentivarlos de incurrir en dichos comportamientos, haciendo que el ciclo de violencia expresado en el modelo sea menos probable. ...
- Citing Article
January 2013
SSRN Electronic Journal
... In line with theories of intergenerational mobility (e.g. Becker et al. 2018), we assume that any factors that enhance human capital investments, such as the quantity and quality of monetary and non-monetary investments made in children's education (including school quality, tutoring, extracurricular activities etc.), are positively correlated with parental resources. One limitation of using parental education as a measure of a child's learning during school closures is that it does not consider other factors that may influence a parent's ability to teach their child effectively. ...
- Citing Article
January 2015
SSRN Electronic Journal