Robert Harris Frank (born January 2, 1945) is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and a professor of economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He contributes to the "Economic View" column, which appears every fifth Sunday in The New York Times. Frank has published on the topic of wealth inequality in the United States. Career Born in Coral Gables, Florida, in 1945. Frank graduated from Coral Gables Senior High School in 1962. Frank received a B.S. in mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1966, M.A. in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971, and Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley in 1972. Until 2001, he was the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy in the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. For the 2008–09 academic year, Frank was a visiting professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. Frank has also been a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Nepal, the chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1992 to 1993), and a Professor of American Civilization at École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (2000–01). In 2008, Frank received an honorary doctorate in Economics from the University of St. Gallen Notable theories Positional arms race This theory is an analytical examination of the socioeconomic concept of keeping up with the Joneses and conspicuous consumption. His book Choosing 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. Winner take all In his book The Winner-Take-All Society, he discusses the contemporary trend toward concentration of wealth. He argues that more and more of the current economy and other institutions are moving toward a state where very