Robert Frank

Full of captivating profiles and expert insights into the lives and lifestyles of the nouveau riche, Richistan tells the real story of a new gilded age. The recent explosion of wealth has created a new breed of multimillionaires. Ed Bazinet, for example, who turned miniature ceramic villages into a $250 million fortune. Or Tim Blixseth, who became a billionaire by trading remote stretches of timberland. Richistan takes readers inside a rarified world...

"From New York Times bestselling author and economics columnist Robert Frank, a revelatory look at the power and potential of social context. As psychologists have long understood, social environments profoundly shape our behavior, sometimes for the better, but often for the worse. Less widely noted is that social influence is a two-way street: Our environments are in large part themselves a product of the choices we make. Society embraces regulations...

"One of Bloomberg View's "Five Books to Change Conservatives' Minds," chosen by Cass Sunstein" "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2016" "Honorable Mention for the 2017 PROSE Award in Economics, Association of American Publishers" "Longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2016" Robert H. Frank is the H. J. Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at Cornell University's Johnson School of...

Why do the keypads on drive-up cash machines have Braille dots? Why are round-trip fares from Orlando to Kansas City higher than those from Kansas City to Orlando? For decades, Robert Frank has been asking his economics students to pose and answer questions like these as a way of learning how economic principles operate in the real world-which they do everywhere, all the time. Once you learn to think like an economist, all kinds of puzzling observations...

How do people actually behave when confronted with economic choices? And remember, almost every choice we make is economic. While our desires are boundless, our resources are limited and tradeoffs confront us at every turn. Arguing that self-interest alone cannot explain the choices we make, Robert H. Frank, a leading proponent of the emerging field of behavioral economics, suggests that context shapes every decision and that consistent human foibles...