Robert H. Frank

Robert H. Frank is the HJ Louis Professor of Management and a professor of economics at Cornell University Johnson School of Management. His Economic View column has appeared in The New York Times for more than a decade.

An internationally renowned behavioral economist, Robert H. Frank studies the ways in which social and psychological forces affect market behavior and the ways markets and economics affect human behavior. He is an expert on the causes and consequences of social inequality, and the ways that public policy can enhance market efficiency and improve the well-being of middle-income families.

Frank's book, The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, is on who is the greater economist, Adam Smith or Charles Darwin. Frank states Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. His book The Economic Naturalist's Field Guide: Common Sense Principles for Troubled Times, is a brilliant behavioral economics perspective on the most important issues of our time, from regulation to taxes to healthcare.

Professor Frank is the author of several other well received books, including an economics textbook co-written with Ben Bernanke, and two books that have received glowing reviews in The New York Times Book Review. His books have been translated into eleven languages.

He has been the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics and Public Polity in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences and the Professor of American Civilization at l'Ecole des Hautes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has served as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Nepal, chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.