Yuval P. Yonay concludes her post with: "I aplogize for a too lengthy   
message, and being a sociologist I hope I didn't make any awful mistake   
in economics."  She could have first read the Dixon article from the   
site kindly provided by Mat Forstater, just I did, before attempting her   
contribution.  She also could have endeavored to explain the extent to   
which Becker's economic analysis differs from Marshall's strictures on   
method, instead of asserting a difference between their work.  Only from   
such serious effort could she have helped to advance the discussion or   
understanding among participants.  "Shooting from the hip," which is   
what I would describe her response to be, is not helpful.  
  
Thus, Yuval claims: "I don't know Dixon's paper but I assume that he   
preferred 21,000 apartments over 23,000 not because of his assumption   
that the black entrepreneur is less motivated by profits but rather due   
to the positive impact of profits gained by black entrepreneurs (and   
assumingly, the more numerous black workers in their firms) on the   
overall economic standing of the Afro-American community. Earned income   
have a more lasting contribution than public housing."  
  
In the first place, that's not Dixon's excuse for preferring the less   
efficient allocation of funds.  Rather, his claim is that of a   
"collective black preference for having its own productive facilities"   
(p. 429n).  But surely, people in the white, yellow, brown, or whatever   
pigmentation community also would like to have their own "productive   
facilities," don't they?  And the funds to acquire productive facilities   
just don't drop from the sky or grow on trees.  They have to be borrowed   
from savings (or taken from income earners through taxes).  That is why   
worrying about the cost of "capital" or funds (or the opportunity cost   
of the collected taxes), and employing the funds efficiently to be able   
to recover the interest cost, wage expenses, materials in construction,   
and earning the developer's own wages (profits) matter in a correct   
analysis.  And to promote economic growth in a community, efficiency in   
the allocation of resources matters.  Encouraging a higher-cost   
production, which Dixon's article suggests, is not the way to promote   
economic well-being among the black or any other community.  
  
Going back to Becker, Yuval writes as if he recommends any particular   
family arrangement rather than attempts to explain the choices that   
spouses have made.  Thus what appears to Yuval as a critique of Becker's   
work: "... but the question is what happens if the spouses decide to   
separate. In such a case, women are left stranded (and this is just one   
problem)," is really little more than asking whether the family utility   
function defined over "until death do us part" is the same as one   
defined over "until divorce do us part"?  The answer is no, and   
"neoclassical economics" can handle or model that too.  In all this, one   
is only following Marshall's point that economics is not a body of   
settled conclusions to be applied in all circumstances but a *framework*   
or an apparatus of the mind for understanding human behavior in   
different circumstances.  
  
James Ahiakpor