Robert H. Frank | |
|---|---|
 Frank in 2013 | |
| Born | (1945-01-02)2 January 1945 (age 81) Coral Gables, Florida, U.S. |
| Occupation | Economist |
| Awards | Leontief Prize 2004 |
| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Cornell University |
| Website | Official website |
Robert Harris Frank (born January 2, 1945)[1][2] is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management Emeritus and a professor of economics at theCornell Johnson Graduate School of Management atCornell University. He contributes to the "Economic View" column, which appears every fifth Sunday inThe New York Times.Frank has published on the topic ofwealth inequality in the United States.[3]
Born inCoral Gables, Florida, in 1945. Frank graduated fromCoral Gables Senior High School in 1962.[1][4] Frank received a B.S. inmathematics from theGeorgia Institute of Technology in 1966, M.A. instatistics from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1971, and Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1972.[5][6]
Until 2001, he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in theCornell University College of Arts and Sciences. For the 2008–09 academic year, Frank was a visiting professor at theNew York University Stern School of Business.[1]
Frank has also been aPeace Corps volunteer in ruralNepal, the chief economist for theCivil Aeronautics Board, a fellow at theCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1992 to 1993), and a professor ofAmerican Civilization atÉcole des hautes études en sciences sociales inParis (2000–01).[1]
In 2008, Frank received an honorary doctorate in economics from theUniversity of St. Gallen[7]
This theory is an analytical examination of the socioeconomic concept ofkeeping up with the Joneses andconspicuous consumption. His bookChoosing the Right Pond discusses the importance of status, and how much people pay for status. Frank argues that the race for status is bad for society as a whole, as there cannot be improvement in overall status available, because every time person A rises above person B, the sum of their status remains the same. The only thing that changes is which person is where in the hierarchy.
He reasons that this race for status explains partly why increases in wealth do not increase well-being, or do not increase it much. According to Frank, if most earnings are spent on pursuing status, there will not be much improvement in intrinsic quality of life.
In their bookThe Winner-Take-All Society, Frank andPhilip J. Cook discuss the contemporary trend toward concentration of wealth. They argue that more and more of the current economy and other institutions are moving toward a state where very few winners take very much, while the rest are left with little. They attributes this, in part, to the modern structure of markets and technology.
In various economic papers and in the bookPassions Within Reason, he discusses the idea that emotions have important roles in decision making and personal interactions, even when they seem to be irrational. For example, the emotions of love give more value to long term romantic commitment. A "rational" person would dump his partner as soon as he found a better partnership. Emotional attachment gives more long term meaning to the relationship. Put poetically: "Those sensible about love are incapable of it." Similarly, anger can be used as aprecommitment device. Frank states that envy can be useful in that it enforces more fair distributions. By acting "irrationally" when treated unfairly, a person can obtain better results in situations which resemble theultimatum game if their opponent anticipates their emotional response and adjusts their strategy accordingly.
Frank, Gilovich, and Regan (1993) conducted an experimental study of theprisoner's dilemma. The subjects were students in their first and final years of undergraduate economics, and undergraduates in other disciplines. Subjects were paired, placed in a typicalgame scenario, then asked to choose either to "cooperate" or to "defect". Pairs of subjects were told that if they both chose "defect" the payoff for each would be 1. If both cooperated, the payoff for each would be 2. If one defected and the other cooperated, the payoff would be 3 for the defector and 0 for the cooperator. Each subject in a pair made his choice without knowing what the other member of the pair chose.
First year economics students, and students doing disciplines other than economics, overwhelmingly chose to cooperate. But 4th year students in economics tended to not cooperate. Frank et al. concluded, that with "an eye toward both thesocial good and thewell-being of their own students, economists may wish to stress a broader view of human motivation in their teaching."
In a highly cited work, Frank showed that the study of economics reduces cooperation in games. The idea is that much of the time cooperation and consideration of other's perspective are irrational in the narrow sense of the word. Thus, learning that cooperation is irrational in some situations is influencing the behavior of the students towards less cooperation, presumably to the negative.[8]
