Gary Becker's Contributions to Economics
这篇综述按主题梳理了贝克尔在歧视经济学、人力资本、消费理论、犯罪与惩罚、政治决策及家庭经济学等领域的开创性工作，并对其研究传统和方法论态度进行了总体评价。
From his first published work, Gary Becker has consistently strived to extend the domain of analysis. His interest is in social science, broadly defined, and he is convinced that theory in its established neoclassical form provides the best set of tools for analysing social science questions. When he finds an interesting problem on the borderland of what is conventionally thought of as economics and that is where he is looking for his problems he is not worried that he is trespassing on the traditional grounds of sociologists, political scientists, lawyers, anthropologists or biologists. On the contrary, he clearly delights in showing how theory can be brought to bear on such problems. He is, of course, not alone in trying to extend the borders of economics; many other scholars have contributed to the movement which some have characterized as economic imperialism. Becker is one of the most outstanding of the imperialists. This review of his work is organized in accordance with the main topics on which Becker has worked. Chronologically, his work on the economics of discrimination, which grew out of his doctoral dissertation, comes first. Next in order come his fundamental contributions to human capital theory. He was also one of the founders of the so-called new theory of consumption (which is no longer so new), and he has made important contributions to the study of crime and punishment and to the economics of political decision-making. Some of his most original work is in the economics of the family, where he provides explanations of such questions as marriage, divorce and procreation. After the topic-by-topic review of Becker's contributions, I will try to provide a more general evaluation of his work and to characterize it more fully in terms of research traditions and methodological attitudes.'