Gary Becker
Gary Stanley Becker was an American economist and empiricist. He was a professor of economics and sociology at the University of Chicago. Described as "the most important social scientist in the past 50 years" by The New York Times, Becker was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1992 and received the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007. A 2011 survey of economics professors named Becker their favorite living economist over the age of 60, followed by Ken Arrow and Robert Solow. Becker was one of the first economists to branch into what were traditionally considered topics that belonged to sociology, including racial discrimination, family organization, drug addiction, he was known for arguing that many different types of human behavior can be seen as rational and utility maximizing. His approach included altruistic behavior of human behavior by defining individuals' utility appropriately, he was among the foremost exponents of the study of human capital. Becker was credited with the "rotten kid theorem."
Born to a Jewish family in Pottsville, Becker earned a B. A. at Princeton University in 1951, a Ph. D. at the University of Chicago in 1955 with a thesis entitled The Economics of Racial Discrimination. At Chicago, Becker was influenced by Milton Friedman, whom Becker called "by far the greatest living teacher I have had". Before turning 30, he began to teach at Columbia University in 1957, in 1970 returned to the University of Chicago. In 1965 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. Becker was a founding partner of a business and philanthropy consulting company. Becker won the John Bates Clark Medal in 1967, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972, was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. Becker received the National Medal of Science in 2000. A political conservative, he wrote a monthly column for Business Week from 1985 to 2004, alternating with liberal Princeton economist Alan Blinder. In 1996 Becker was a senior adviser to Republican Presidential Candidate Robert Dole.
In December 2004, Becker started a joint weblog with Judge Richard Posner entitled The Becker-Posner Blog."The Becker-Posner Blog". Uchicagolaw. University of Chicago Law School. Becker's first wife was Doria Slote, from 1954 until her death in 1970; the marriage produced Catherine Becker and Judy Becker. About ten years in 1980 Becker married Guity Nashat, a historian of the Middle East whose research interests overlapped his own. Becker had Cyrus Claffey and Michael Claffey, from his second marriage. Becker died in Chicago, aged 83, on May 3, 2014, after complications from surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. In 2014 he was honored in a three-day conference organized at the University of Chicago. Becker received the Nobel Prize in 1992 "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behavior and interaction, including nonmarket behavior". Becker wrote his dissertation in 1955 at the University of Chicago, which examined the economics of discrimination. At the time, economics was the study of market behavior and market economies.
Becker challenged the past era of economics by bringing a new investigation of social matters to economics. Becker's contribution to discrimination was unpopular with people arguing that his theory was not economics, he used the international trade model for his analysis on The Economics of Discrimination. In 1957, the publication of his thesis was the study of the market, he believed both groups can be harmed. The discriminating firm can limit its own profitability. Becker included a variable of taste for discrimination in explaining behavior, he believes that people mentally increase the cost of a transaction if it is with a minority against which they discriminate. His theory held. If firms were able to specialize in employing minorities and offer a better product or service, such a firm could bypass discrepancy in wages between productive blacks and whites or productive females and males, his research found that when minorities are a small percentage the cost of discrimination falls on the minorities.
However, when minorities represent a larger percentage of society, the cost of discrimination falls on both the minorities and the majority. He pioneered research on the impact of self-fulfilling prophecies of teachers and employers on minorities; such attitudes lead to less investment in productive skills and education of minorities. Becker recognized that people sometimes do not want to work with minorities because they have preference against the disadvantaged groups, he goes on to say that discrimination increases the cost of the firm because in discriminating against certain workers, the employer would have to pay more so that work can proceed without them. If the employer employs the minority, low wages can be provided, but more people can be employed, productivity can be increased. Becker is famous for his economic analysis of democracy, he asked. He considered this exploitation to be deadweight loss; as Palda explains According to Becker, political equilibrium exists in non-democratic societies.
It arises out of a simple calculation that predatory interest groups and their taxpaying victims make: what return on my investment can I get by lobbying government? Becker's insight is that the gains to predators are linear, but the
Microeconomics
Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behaviour of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. One goal of microeconomics is to analyze the market mechanisms that establish relative prices among goods and services and allocate limited resources among alternative uses. Microeconomics shows conditions, it analyzes market failure, where markets fail to produce efficient results. Microeconomics stands in contrast to macroeconomics, which involves "the sum total of economic activity, dealing with the issues of growth and unemployment and with national policies relating to these issues". Microeconomics deals with the effects of economic policies on microeconomic behavior and thus on the aforementioned aspects of the economy. In the wake of the Lucas critique, much of modern macroeconomic theories has been built upon microfoundations—i.e. Based upon basic assumptions about micro-level behavior.
Microeconomic theory begins with the study of a single rational and utility maximizing individual. To economists, rationality means an individual possesses stable preferences that are both complete and transitive; the technical assumption that preference relations are continuous is needed to ensure the existence of a utility function. Although microeconomic theory can continue without this assumption, it would make comparative statics impossible since there is no guarantee that the resulting utility function would be differentiable. Microeconomic theory progresses by defining a competitive budget set, a subset of the consumption set, it is at this point that economists make the technical assumption that preferences are locally non-satiated. Without the assumption of LNS there is no 100% guarantee but there would be a rational rise in individual utility. With the necessary tools and assumptions in place the utility maximization problem is developed; the utility maximization problem is the heart of consumer theory.
The utility maximization problem attempts to explain the action axiom by imposing rationality axioms on consumer preferences and mathematically modeling and analyzing the consequences. The utility maximization problem serves not only as the mathematical foundation of consumer theory but as a metaphysical explanation of it as well; that is, the utility maximization problem is used by economists to not only explain what or how individuals make choices but why individuals make choices as well. The utility maximization problem is a constrained optimization problem in which an individual seeks to maximize utility subject to a budget constraint. Economists use the extreme value theorem to guarantee that a solution to the utility maximization problem exists; that is, since the budget constraint is both bounded and closed, a solution to the utility maximization problem exists. Economists call the solution to the utility maximization problem a Walrasian demand function or correspondence; the utility maximization problem has so far been developed by taking consumer tastes as the primitive.
However, an alternative way to develop microeconomic theory is by taking consumer choice as the primitive. This model of microeconomic theory is referred to as revealed preference theory; the theory of supply and demand assumes that markets are competitive. This implies that there are many buyers and sellers in the market and none of them have the capacity to influence prices of goods and services. In many real-life transactions, the assumption fails because some individual buyers or sellers have the ability to influence prices. Quite a sophisticated analysis is required to understand the demand-supply equation of a good model. However, the theory works well in situations meeting these assumptions. Mainstream economics does not assume a priori that markets are preferable to other forms of social organization. In fact, much analysis is devoted to cases where market failures lead to resource allocation, suboptimal and creates deadweight loss. A classic example of suboptimal resource allocation is that of a public good.
In such cases, economists may attempt to find policies that avoid waste, either directly by government control, indirectly by regulation that induces market participants to act in a manner consistent with optimal welfare, or by creating "missing markets" to enable efficient trading where none had existed. This is studied in the field of public choice theory. "Optimal welfare" takes on a Paretian norm, a mathematical application of the Kaldor–Hicks method. This can diverge from the Utilitarian goal of maximizing utility because it does not consider the distribution of goods between people. Market failure in positive economics is limited in implications without mixing the belief of the economist and their theory; the demand for various commodities by individuals is thought of as the outcome of a utility-maximizing process, with each individual trying to maximize their own utility under a budget constraint and a given consumption set. The study of microeconomics involves several "key" areas: Supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a competitive market.
It concludes that in a competitive market with no externalities, per unit taxes, or price controls, the unit price for a particular good is the price at which the quantity demanded by consumers equals the quantity supplied by producers. This price results in a stable economic equilibrium. Elasticity is the measurement of how resp
Yale University
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Chartered by Connecticut Colony, the "Collegiate School" was established by clergy to educate Congregational ministers, it moved to New Haven in 1716 and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph. D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Its faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools.
While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven and forest and nature preserves throughout New England; the university's assets include an endowment valued at $29.4 billion as of October 2018, the second largest endowment of any educational institution in the world. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a social system of residential colleges. All members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—and some members of other faculties—teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.
As of October 2018, 61 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields Medalists and 3 Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U. S. Presidents, 19 U. S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires and many heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U. S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 247 Rhodes Scholars and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Its wealth and influence have led to Yale being reported as amoungst the most prestigious universities in the United States. Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven; the Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, Rev. James Noyes II, James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, Timothy Woodbridge, all alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's library.
The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders". Known as the "Collegiate School", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, today considered the first president of Yale. Pierson lived in Killingworth; the school moved to Saybrook and Wethersfield. In 1716, it moved to Connecticut. Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as liberal, ecclesiastically lax, overly broad in Church polity; the feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not. In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the successful Boston born businessman Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Elihu "Eli" Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in Madras as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time.
Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to "Yale College".. Meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale; the 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his original theology known as the "new divinity". In 1722 the Rector and six of his friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced that they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians and joined the Church of England, they were returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745 and struggled to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, but he did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library. Yale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the peri
Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics
The Gary Becker Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics is a collaborative, cross-disciplinary center for research in economics. The institute was established at the University of Chicago in June 2011, it brought together the activities of two independent economic research centers at the University: the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics and the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory, founded by Richard O. Ryan, MBA ’66; the institute is named for two globally influential economists: Gary S. Becker and his mentor, Milton Friedman, both winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. While they pursued different scholarly paths and Friedman shared a fundamental belief that economics, grounded in empirical research, is a powerful tool to understand human behavior. While Friedman is known for his lasting contributions to macroeconomics and monetary economics, Becker is recognized for extending microeconomic analysis to a wide range of fields and topics. A collaboration of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Law School, Department of Economics, the Harris School for Public Policy, the Institute builds bridges across disciplines and subfields of economics.
Its research conferences and initiatives bring economists and scholars from related fields together to share perspectives and refine ideas. The institute sponsors an active visiting scholars program and offers programs and support for students and promising young researchers; the institute supports research initiatives in traditional Chicago strengths such as price theory and economics, human capital, as well as topical inquiries into important policy issues such as fiscal imbalance, systemic risk, policy uncertainty, economics of the family, newer areas like field experiments in economics. The institute is co-chaired by Lars Peter Hansen, a co-recipient of the 2013 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Kevin M. Murphy, the recipient of the 1997 John Bates Clark Medal. An Institute Research Council of distinguished faculty from collaborating university units advises the cochairs. Official website
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League research university located in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is one of the nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence and the first institution of higher learning in the United States to refer to itself as a university. Benjamin Franklin, Penn's founder and first president, advocated an educational program that trained leaders in commerce and public service, similar to a modern liberal arts curriculum; the university's coat of arms features a dolphin on its red chief, adopted from Benjamin Franklin's own coat of arms. University of Pennsylvania is home many professional and graduate schools including, the first school of medicine in North America, the first collegiate business school and the first "student union" building and organization were founded at Penn; the university has four undergraduate schools which provide a combined 99 undergraduate majors in the humanities, natural sciences and engineering, as well twelve graduate and professional schools.
It provides the option to pursue specialized dual degree programs. Undergraduate admissions is competitive, with an acceptance rate of 7.44% for the class of 2023, the school is ranked as the 8th best university in the United States by the U. S. News & World Report. In athletics, the Quakers field varsity teams in 33 sports as a member of the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference and hold a total of 210 Ivy League championships as of 2017. In 2018, the university had an endowment of $13.8 billion, the seventh largest endowment of all colleges in the United States, as well as an academic research budget of $966 million. As of 2018, distinguished alumni include 14 heads of 64 billionaire alumni. S. House of Representatives. Other notable alumni include 27 Rhodes Scholars, 15 Marshall Scholarship recipients, 16 Pulitzer Prize winners, 48 Fulbright Scholars. In addition, some 35 Nobel laureates, 169 Guggenheim Fellows, 80 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, many Fortune 500 CEOs have been affiliated with the university.
University of Pennsylvania considers itself the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, though this is contested by Princeton and Columbia Universities. The university considers itself as the first university in the United States with both undergraduate and graduate studies. In 1740, a group of Philadelphians joined together to erect a great preaching hall for the traveling evangelist George Whitefield, who toured the American colonies delivering open air sermons; the building was designed and built by Edmund Woolley and was the largest building in the city at the time, drawing thousands of people the first time it was preached in. It was planned to serve as a charity school as well, but a lack of funds forced plans for the chapel and school to be suspended. According to Franklin's autobiography, it was in 1743 when he first had the idea to establish an academy, "thinking the Rev. Richard Peters a fit person to superintend such an institution". However, Peters declined a casual inquiry from Franklin and nothing further was done for another six years.
In the fall of 1749, now more eager to create a school to educate future generations, Benjamin Franklin circulated a pamphlet titled "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania", his vision for what he called a "Public Academy of Philadelphia". Unlike the other Colonial colleges that existed in 1749—Harvard, William & Mary and Princeton—Franklin's new school would not focus on education for the clergy, he advocated an innovative concept of higher education, one which would teach both the ornamental knowledge of the arts and the practical skills necessary for making a living and doing public service. The proposed program of study could have become the nation's first modern liberal arts curriculum, although it was never implemented because William Smith, an Anglican priest who became the first provost and other trustees preferred the traditional curriculum. Franklin assembled a board of trustees from among the leading citizens of Philadelphia, the first such non-sectarian board in America.
At the first meeting of the 24 members of the Board of Trustees, the issue of where to locate the school was a prime concern. Although a lot across Sixth Street from the old Pennsylvania State House, was offered without cost by James Logan, its owner, the Trustees realized that the building erected in 1740, still vacant, would be an better site; the original sponsors of the dormant building still owed considerable construction debts and asked Franklin's group to assume their debts and, their inactive trusts. On February 1, 1750, the new board took over the building and trusts of the old board. On August 13, 1751, the "Academy of Philadelphia", using the great hall at 4th and Arch Streets, took in its first secondary students. A charity school was chartered July 13, 1753 in accordance with the intentions of the original "New Building" donors, although it lasted only a few years. On June 16, 1755, the "College of Philadelphia" was chartered, paving the way for the addition of undergraduate instruction.
All three schools shared the same Board of Trustees and were consider
Early childhood education
Early childhood education is a branch of education theory which relates to the teaching of children from birth up to the age of eight, traditionally about third grade. It emerged as a field of study during the Enlightenment in European countries with high literacy rates, it continued to grow through the nineteenth century as universal primary education became a norm in the Western world. In recent years, early childhood education has become a prevalent public policy issue, as municipal and federal lawmakers consider funding for preschool and pre-K, it is described as an important period in a child's development. It refers to the development of a child's personality. ECE is a professional designation earned through a post-secondary education program. For example, in Ontario, the designations ECE and RECE may only be used by registered members of the College of Early Childhood Educators, made up of accredited child care professionals who are held accountable to the College's standards of practice.
The history of early childhood care and education refers to the development of care and education of children from birth through eight years old throughout history. ECCE has a global scope, caring for and educating young children has always been an integral part of human societies. Arrangements for fulfilling these societal roles have evolved over time and remain varied across cultures reflecting family and community structures as well as the social and economic roles of women and men; such arrangements have been informal, involving family and community members. The formalization of these arrangements emerged in the nineteenth century with the establishment of kindergartens for educational purposes and day nurseries for care in much of Europe and North America, China, India and Mexico. While the first two years of a child's life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self", most children are able to differentiate between themselves and others by their second year; this differentiation is crucial to the child's ability to determine how they should function in relation to other people.
Parents can be seen as a child's first teacher and therefore an integral part of the early learning process. Early childhood attachment processes that occur during early childhood years 0–2 years of age, can be influential to future education. With proper guidance and exploration children begin to become more comfortable with their environment, if they have that steady relationship to guide them. Parents who are consistent with response times, emotions will properly make this attachment early on. If this attachment is not made, there can be detrimental effects on the child in their future relationships and independence. There are proper techniques that parents and caregivers can use to establish these relationships, which will in turn allow children to be more comfortable exploring their environment. Academic Journal Reference This provides experimental research on the emphasis on caregiving effecting attachment. Education for young students can help. With exposure and organized lesson plans children can learn anything.
The tools they learn to use during these beginning years will provide lifelong benefits to their success. Developmentally, having structure and freedom, children are able to reach their full potential. Teachers seeking to be early childhood educators must obtain certification among other requirements. "An early childhood education certification denotes that a teacher has met a set of standards that shows they understand the best ways to educate young students aged 3 to 8." There are early childhood education programs across the United States that have a certification, pre-K to grade 4. There are programs now that have a duel certification in pre-K to grade 4 and special education from pre-K to grade 8. Other certifications are urban tracks in pre-k to grade 4 that have an emphasis on urban schools and preparing teachers to teach in those school environments; these tracks take 4 years to complete and in the end provide students with their certifications to teach in schools. These tracks give students in the field experience in multiple different types of classrooms as they learn how to become teachers.
An example of a school that has these tracks is Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Early childhood educators must have knowledge in the developmental changes during early childhood and the subjects being taught in an early childhood classroom; these subjects include language arts and reading and some social studies and science. Early childhood educators must be able to manage classroom behavior. Positive reinforcement is one popular method for managing behavior in young children. Teacher certification laws vary by state in the United States. In Connecticut, for example, these requirements include a bachelor's degree, 36 hours of special education courses, passing scores on the Praxis II Examination and Connecticut Foundations of Reading Test and a criminal history background check. For State of Early Childhood Education Bornfreund, 2011. States are requiring educators who work in open pre-kindergarten to have specific preparing in Early Childhood Education; as per the State of Pre-School Yearbook, 45 states require their educators to have a specialization in Early Childhood Education and 30 states require no less
