06/05/2014
Miguel Marín Cózar is the Director of FAES Economy and Public Policies Department
I like economists who, besides inventing things, are remembered for knowing how to explain the reality that surrounds them and making it understandable to others. I like economists who do not die, but survive the problems of their times and whose solutions reach future generations. I like economists who are convincing in simplicity, implacable in logic, overwhelming in evidence. This is how Nobel Prize winner economist and professor of Economics and Sociology at the University of Chicago, Gary Becker, was, and how we will always be. His master formulas were simple and perfect at the same time: an individual + human capital + incentives = one unemployed person less. He did not need any additional ingredients. No historical determinism, no class struggle, no unsatisfied aggregate demands, no threatening technological developments. To Gary Becker, economics was pure, without seasoning, without spices that distorted its essence. When you look through the peephole of rational individuals, like he exemplarily did, economics gains sense and plenitude. Sometimes, it is the forest that does not allow us to enjoy the beauty of a tree. Becker understood this perfectly. His view of rational individuals enabled him to cross the boundaries of traditional economics and to tread on grounds which were considered dangerous by many, but where he was able to stroll effortlessly: family, marriage, immigration, criminality. Gary Becker made macroeconomics great.
In 2006, we were extremely lucky to have him deliver an address at FAES. Let the link to his address pay silent tribute to him at a time in Spain when clear ideas, principles and essences are so much needed, absorbed as we are in so many risk premiums, stock market indexes and other volatile trifles.
Any doctrinal label would be a too-tight straitjacket for Gary Becker. A great economist is gone and a classic is born. We would like to express our sincerest condolences to those who enjoyed his existence at some time.