Robert frank economist biography

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Robert frank economist biography

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 book Passions Within Reasonhe 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. 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 the ultimatum game if their opponent anticipates their emotional response and adjusts their strategy accordingly. Frank, Gilovich, and Regan conducted an experimental study of the prisoner'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 typical game scenariothen 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 robert frank economist biography 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. 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. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk.

Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikidata item. American professor of economics at Cornell University. For other people named Robert Frank, see Robert Frank disambiguation. Coral Gables, Florida. Career [ edit ]. Notable theories [ edit ]. Positional arms race [ edit ].

Further information: Expenditure cascades. Winner take all [ edit ]. The strategic role of emotions [ edit ]. Prisoner's dilemma and cooperation [ edit ]. Negative effects of studying economics [ edit ]. Publications [ edit ]. Books [ edit ]. Articles [ edit ]. References [ edit ].