The Economic Approach to Human Behavior

The collection in which Becker sets out the programme that won him the Nobel: that the economic method — stable preferences, scarce resources, maximizing behaviour, equilibrium — applies to conduct that economics had left to other disciplines. The essays cover marriage and the family, fertility, discrimination, crime and punishment, irrational behaviour and the allocation of time, and the introduction states the method explicitly as a claim about the reach of price theory rather than about the subject matter of markets.

Why it’s on the list: It is the Chicago sub-section’s statement of method: where the Austrians in the preceding section make knowledge the central problem, Chicago makes price theory a universal tool, and this is the book that says so directly.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Chicago School Economics. Shared on X on March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note. The full 211-entry transcription, with the four parts and sixteen sub-sections, is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this card came from.
• Economics — the discipline whose boundaries this book is an argument about.
• Incentives — the mechanism Becker extends into non-market conduct.
• Human Nature — the maximizing model of the agent the programme assumes.