Chicago school of economics

Chicago school of economics, an economic school of thought, originally developed by members of the department of economics at the University of Chicago, that emphasizes free-market principles. The Chicago school of economics was founded in the 1930s, mainly by Frank Hyneman Knight, and subsequently produced multiple Nobel Prize winners. In addition to Knight, some of the leading and best-known members of the school were Gary S. Becker, Ronald Coase, Aaron Director, Milton Friedman, Merton H. Miller, Richard Posner, and George J. Stigler. The Chicago school is also associated with the law-and-economics approach to jurisprudence, which was developed at the University of Chicago Law School.

At the heart of the Chicago school’s approach is the belief in the value of free markets (see also laissez-faire). Simply stated, the Chicago school asserts that markets without government interference will produce the best outcomes for society (i.e., the most-efficient outcomes). A primary assumption of the school is the rational-actor (self-interest-maximizing) model of human behaviour, according to which people generally act to maximize their self-interest and will, therefore, respond to appropriately designed price incentives. At the level of society, free markets populated by rational actors will cause resources to be distributed on the basis of their most-valuable uses (allocative efficiency).

The Chicago school’s approach to antitrust law in the area of regulatory policy provides an excellent demonstration of its general principles. The traditional approach to antitrust regulatory policy is to limit concentrations of market power, such as by breaking up a firm that has become a monopoly. The Chicago school, on the other hand, argues that consumers are best protected by competition, even if it is only between a few large firms in an industry. Such large firms may have gained their dominant market positions through efficiency advantages that provide greater benefits to consumers than a market forced by the law to include many smaller firms. Even if a firm gains monopoly power, the Chicago school prefers to allow the market to correct the problem rather than to rely on government intervention, which may cause greater harm to efficiency.

The Chicago school’s principles have been applied to a wide variety of areas, including both market- and nonmarket-based activities. For example, Becker applied the assumption that people make rational self-interested economic choices to help explain aspects of human behaviour not traditionally studied by economics, including crime, racial discrimination, marriage, and family life. In the realm of law and economics, the Chicago school argued that legal rules and court decisions should be aimed at promoting efficiency. The role of the law is simply to alter the incentives of individuals and organizations to achieve that end. For example, in the area of tort law, the goal should be not simply to minimize the cost of accidents but also to minimize the cost of preventing accidents. If liability rules require individuals to take precautions against accidents that are more costly than the accidents themselves, then the outcome is allocatively inefficient.

The Chicago school has been criticized from many points of view. For example, behavioral economics scholars challenge the assumption that humans are rational self-interest maximizers. Instead, they argue that certain decision heuristics and biases prevent people from being the ideal decision makers the Chicago school assumes them to be. Others argue that the Chicago school’s goal of efficiency can be achieved only at the cost of justice and equality in society.