In his Nobel address, Becker suggested that the economic approach is not a subject matter, nor is it a mathematical means of explaining “the economy.” Rather, it is a decision to examine the world a bit differently. It is a systematic means of describing how people make decisions and how they change their minds; how they choose someone to love and marry, someone perhaps to hate and even kill; whether, coming upon a pile of money, they will steal from it, leave it alone, or even add to it; why they may fear one thing and yearn for something only slightly different; why they’ll punish one sort
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