27+ Robert H. Frank Quotes On Freedom, War And Writing

Professor Robert H. Frank is an American economist and professor at Cornell University. He is the author of several books on economics and behavioral economics, including The Economic Naturalist and The Darwin Economy. He is known for his work on the economics of inequality and the economics of happiness. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Robert H. Frank on life, leadership, love.

Top 10 Robert H. Frank Quotes

1. The most glaring deficiency in traditional economic models is that they completely ignore the role of context in evaluation.
2. If government is inevitable, the challenge is to come up with the most effective one possible.
3. No society has ever succeeded without a decent government.
4. The link between rational individual behavior and collectively desirable outcomes is extremely tenuous.
5. If the search is for examples that contradict the predictions of standard economic models, a good rule of thumb is to start in France.
6. When people bump up against one another in the course of pursuing their goals, it is in everyone's interest to resolve any resulting problems in the least costly ways possible.
7. The most common mistake we make as teachers is attempting to tell our students too much.
8. Life is graded on the curve. It's not how big you are, how strong you are, how smart you are. It's how good you are at the things that count relative to the people around you.
9. In short both the things we feel we need and the things available for us to buy depend largely—beyond some point, almost entirely—on the things that others choose to buy.
10. As economists have long noted, the puzzle is not that so few people vote, it's that so many do. After all, no individual's vote has ever tipped the balance in a presidential election.

Robert H. Frank Famous Quotes And Sayings

Rising inequality hasn't really accomplished anything of value for its ostensible beneficiaries, the top one percent. They've all built bigger mansions and staged more lavish parties. But in so doing, they've simply raised the bar that defines what's considered adequate in these categories. — Robert H. Frank

Unless we can act collectively, there would be no way to defend ourselves, no way to define or enforce property rights. We couldn't curb congestion or pollution or build and maintain public infrastructure. — Robert H. Frank

Economics, as it is often taught today, portrays us as homo economicus-someone who doesn't vote in presidential elections, doesn't return lost wallets, and doesn't leave tips when dining out of town. Julie Nelson reminds us that most people aren't really like that. She helps point the way to a richer, more descriptive way of thinking about economic life. — Robert H. Frank

The private sector is first of all much larger than the public sector. The waste we see in that sector does not result from the fact that people spend their money carelessly. Mostly, it occurs because what one family must spend to achieve its goals often depends heavily on what other families spend. — Robert H. Frank

Only the federal government has the power to spend beyond its current revenue. It shouldn't do that when the economy is at full employment. But it's an essential step for an economy mired in recession. — Robert H. Frank

We've long known that firms can pay higher wages if they spend less on workplace safety enhancement. Libertarians ask, "If a worker is willing to accept higher wages in return for his agreement to exercise greater caution while performing his job, why should the government prevent him from making that choice?" It's a rhetorically powerful question, yet it overlooks the fact that the agreement in question will have adverse effects on others. — Robert H. Frank

When the economic pie grows larger, it's always possible for everyone to have a larger slice than before. So it's really in all of our interest to make the economic pie larger by eliminating waste whenever and wherever possible. — Robert H. Frank

The fact that many private expenditures are mutually offsetting actually happens to constitute a remarkably good bit of fiscal news. Mutually offsetting spending patterns are wasteful in the same way that military arms races are. In such situations, if each party spends less, nothing is sacrificed, yet resources are freed up that can be put to much better uses. — Robert H. Frank

We're in a classic demand-shortfall recession. There aren't enough jobs because total spending is too low. Consumers won't lead the way because they're busy paying down debt and are fearful they'll lose their jobs, if they haven't already. Businesses, which are currently sitting on mountains of cash, won't spend either, because they already have sufficient capacity to produce more than people are willing to buy. — Robert H. Frank

Trusting others puts us at risk. Yet failure to trust entails risk as well. The ability to navigate through this minefield successfully is one of life’s most valuable assets. DeSteno provides by far the best account of what science has learned about how we do this. The Truth About Trust is also a terrific read. — Robert H. Frank

As John Maynard Keynes taught us in the 1930s, in such situations, government is the only entity with both the motive and the ability to boost total spending by enough to put people back to work. As it happens there are long lists of important public projects that cry out to be done. — Robert H. Frank

Many social critics wag their fingers at what they perceive to be frivolous luxury spending. But that misses the point that consumption norms are local. It's not just the rich who spend more when they get more money. Everyone else does, too. The mansions of the rich may seem over the top to people in the middle, but the same could be said of middle-class houses as seen by most of the planet's seven billion people. — Robert H. Frank

Pass down values every day through your actions, your words and your time with your kids. — Robert H. Frank

We could curtail private spending by several trillion dollars a year without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That would be more than enough to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and eliminate government indebtedness once and for all. — Robert H. Frank

Adam Smith's uncritically enthusiastic modern disciples portray his invisible hand theory as saying that market forces reliably harness selfish individuals to serve the common good. That's often true, but as Darwin recognized clearly, many traits that serve the interests of individual animals make life more difficult for larger groups. — Robert H. Frank

The primary source of waste in government is that legislators are often under heavy pressure to vote for projects that will benefit their campaign contributors, even when those projects fail a simple cost-benefit test. But with the Supreme Court showing little interest in permitting tighter rules on campaign contributions in recent years, there is little reason to be optimistic that we'll start curbing this kind of waste any time soon. — Robert H. Frank

One reason that might motivate a worker to accept a riskier job at higher pay, for example, would be that doing so would enable him to bid more effectively for a house in a better school district. But if other workers did likewise, none would achieve the goal they were striving for. — Robert H. Frank

Life Lessons by Robert H. Frank

1. Robert H. Frank's work emphasizes the importance of considering the long-term consequences of our decisions, rather than focusing solely on the short-term benefits.
2. He also advocates for policies that promote fairness and equality, such as progressive taxation and the elimination of subsidies for the wealthy.
3. Finally, he emphasizes the need for individuals to be mindful of their own biases and to think critically about the decisions they make, in order to make the best decisions for themselves and society.