Forty years ago, Chicago economist Gary Becker wrote an essay describing “the economic approach to human behaviour”. In his view, “the combined assumptions of maximising behaviour, market equilibrium and stable preferences, used relentlessly and unflinchingly, form the heart of the economic approach”. He went on to claim: “The economic approach is a comprehensive one that is applicable to all human behaviour.” His own work included an economic analysis of family life. In 1992, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for “having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour”.
40年前，芝加哥經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家加里?貝克爾(Gary Becker)寫了一篇論文，描述“研究人類行為的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)方法”。在他看來，“將這幾項(xiàng)假設(shè)——人的行為遵循利益最大化原則、市場處于均衡狀態(tài)、人的偏好是穩(wěn)定的——結(jié)合起來，并反復(fù)大膽運(yùn)用，就構(gòu)成了經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)方法的核心”。他還宣稱：“經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)的方法適用范圍極廣，可用來解釋一切人類行為。”他自己的研究工作就包括對家庭生活的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)分析。1992年，他被授予諾貝爾經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)獎，理由是他“拓展了微觀經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)分析方法的應(yīng)用范圍，使之可適用于分析范圍廣泛的一系列人類行為”。