Karl Otwin Becker

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Karl Otwin Becker (born October 16, 1932 in Darmstadt ) is a German economist and mathematician . Becker is one of the pioneers of experimental economic research in Germany.

Life

Becker was born on October 16, 1932 in Darmstadt. After visiting the Liebig-secondary school up to the lower-Secunda he began an apprenticeship as a 1949 commercial assistant and laid in 1956 the exam for accountants from. In 1958 Becker received his Abitur at the evening grammar school . He then studied economics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt and attended mathematics lectures. He completed his studies in 1962 with a diploma.

From 1962 to 1970 Becker was assistant to Heinz Sauermann at the seminar for mathematical economic research in Frankfurt . From 1965 to 1970 he was also a lecturer for electronic data processing at the University of Frankfurt and from 1965 to 1969 freelancer for the Olivetti company in software development for Programma 101 . In 1966 Becker received his doctorate summa cum laude from Heinz Sauermann with a thesis on "The economic decisions of the household". The habilitation followed in 1970 with a thesis on "Econometric Forecasting Methods" with the Venia Legendi for Economics and Econometrics . Becker took over the professorship for general business administration at the University of Münster and for economic theory at the University of Heidelberg . In 1971 Becker was appointed full professor at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz . He was head of the Institute for Mathematics, Statistics and Econometrics and participated in the establishment of the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences.

In 1974 Becker accepted the call to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg as a professor of economic theory at the Alfred Weber Institute for Social and Political Sciences , where he taught and researched until his retirement. He is married and has four kids. Becker lives in Walldorf near Heidelberg.

Act

Heinz Sauermann and his colleagues became aware of Becker while studying at the University of Frankfurt and in 1961 offered him a position as a research assistant. Since then, Becker has been a member of the Frankfurt Circle for Experimental Economic Research - created by Heinz Sauermann and the later Nobel Prize winner for economics, Reinhard Selten .

The first experimental work by Becker - published in the first edition of "Contributions to Experimental Economic Research" - is an investigation of the formation of expectations for a time series in which Becker developed an original behavior theory. Together with Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger he later developed a modified and improved approach with the so-called bounds and liklehood procedure . These contributions to the formation of expectations are important for the development of a theory of limited rationality and enable predictions for future developments under certain conditions. Becker's 1967 dissertation on household theory contains some original ideas, such as an early version of a theory of a lifelong consumption cycle . Published in German, the dissertation was largely ignored internationally. The idea of ​​the lifelong consumption cycle later became very important in literature, but was never ascribed to Becker.

According to Reinhard Selten, even more important than this early elaboration of a theory of the lifelong consumption cycle is the original presentation of an approach to limited, rational consumer behavior. Becker proposed the idea that the consumer consisted of two units: a “desire generator” that produces consumption wishes, and a “control authority” that checks these wishes and either allows or suppresses them. The control authority has levels of entitlement according to the prices of the wishes to be allowed. The total income is divided into a number of funds for different types of wishes. A wish is allowed to be fulfilled if there is still money available in the fund concerned and the price is below a maximum level. The sizes of a fund and the maximum prices are adjusted according to a claim adaptation scheme.

Becker also worked on problems of econometrics and statistics. In the field of business research , Becker has presented work on the problem of the optimal number of routes in a transport unit and on the Helmstadt sequence problem . A joint research work by Otwin Becker and Reinhard Selten is the management game SINTO-Market. This business game was developed and programmed by Becker in the early sixties. SINTO-Market has been experiencing a revival since 2001 and is being used again as a research instrument.

honors and awards

"His outstanding academic achievements in economic and business theory and his sustained contribution to the development of the faculty" are recognized.

Memberships

  • Society for Economic and Social Sciences ( Association for Social Policy ); Founding member and several times chairman of the Social Science Committee
  • Founding member of the Society for Experimental Economic Research (GfeW, 1977), Frankfurt
  • Founding member of the Alfred Weber Society, Heidelberg
  • DGOR - German Society for Operations Research
  • Austrian Statistical Society, Vienna
  • ÖGOR - Austrian Society for Operations Research, Vienna

Fonts (selection)

  • The economic decisions of the household . Frankfurt economic and social science studies, No. 18. Duncker & Humblot , Berlin 1967. ISBN 3-428-00075-7 .
  • COBOL programming instructions , Frankfurt / Main 1968.
  • COBOL collection of exercises , Frankfurt / Main 1968.
  • Experiences with the Management Game SINTO-Market (with Reinhard Selten ). In: Heinz Sauermann (Ed.): Contributions to experimental economic research . Volume 2, JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck) , Tübingen 1970, pp. 136-150.
  • Econometric forecasting methods (Habilschrift). Frankfurt Economic and Social Science Studies, Volume 32, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1970.
  • The Bounds and Likelihood-Procedure - A Simulation Study concerning the Efficiency of Visual Forecasting Techniques (with Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger ). In: Central European Journal of Operations Research and Economics . Volume 4, number 2/3, pp. 223-229, 1996.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Selten : Remarks about Karl Otwin Becker . In: Central European Journal of Operations Research . Volume 10, No. 3, 2002, ISSN 1435-246X, p. 187.
  2. ↑ Otwin Becker: Experimental investigation of the formation of expectations for a time series . In: Heinz Sauermann (Ed.): Contributions to experimental economic research . JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1967, ISSN 0340-6784, pp. 226-254.
  3. ^ Otwin Becker, Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger : The bounds & likelihood-procedure - A Simulation Study concerning the Effects of Visual Forecasting Techniques . In: Central European Journal of Operations Research and Economics . Volume 4, number 2/3, 1996, pp. 223-229.
  4. ↑ Reinhard Selten: Remarks about Karl Otwin Becker . In: Central European Journal of Operations Research . Volume 10, No. 3, 2002, ISSN 1435-246X, p. 188.
  5. ^ Otwin Becker: The economic decisions of the household . Frankfurt economic and social science studies, No. 18. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1967. ISBN 3-428-00075-7 .
  6. ↑ Reinhard Selten: Remarks about Karl Otwin Becker . In: Central European Journal of Operations Research . Volume 10, No. 3, 2002, ISSN 1435-246X, p. 188.
  7. ↑ Reinhard Selten: Remarks about Karl Otwin Becker . In: Central European Journal of Operations Research . Volume 10, No. 3, 2002, ISSN 1435-246X, p. 188.
  8. ^ Otwin Becker, Reinhard Selten: Experiences with the Management Game SINTO-Market . In: Heinz Sauermann (Ed.): Contributions to experimental economic research . Volume 2, JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1970, pp. 136-150.
  9. ^ Otwin Becker, Reinhard Selten, Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger, Susanne Lind: The Management Game SINTO-Market revived . Working paper, Institute of Social Sciences and Management, University of Kalmar, Sweden 2001. Otwin Becker, Tanja Feit, Vera Hofer, Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger, Susanne Lind-Bübers, Jörg Schütze, Reinhard Selten: The Management Game SINTO-Market - Report on Some Recent Experiments . In: Operations Research Proceedings . Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 2002. ISBN 978-3-540-00387-8 , pp. 453-458.
  10. ↑ https://www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/personalien/pers1111.html
  11. ↑ http://www.gfew.de/index.php?PHPSESSID=8bc414818aa71cea36aeb38146f598d5
personal data
SURNAME Becker, Karl Otwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt