About the Authors

Robert H. Frank, Cornell University

Robert H. Frank received his B.S. in mathematics from Georgia Tech in 1966, then taught math and science for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal. He received his M.A. in statistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971, and his Ph.D. in economics in 1972, also from U.C. Berkeley. He is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Economics at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1972 and where he currently holds a joint appointment in the department of economics and the Johnson Graduate School of Management. During leaves of absence from Cornell, he served as chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board from 1978 to 1980 and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 1992-93.
     He has published on a variety of subjects, including price and wage discrimination, public utility pricing, the measurement of unemployment spell lengths, and the distributional consequences of direct foreign investment. For the past several years, his research has focused on rivalry and cooperation in economic and social behavior. His books on these themes include Choosing the Right Pond: Human Behavior and the Quest for Status (Oxford University Press, 1985) and Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions (W.W. Norton, 1988). He and Philip Cook are co-authors of The Winner-Take-All Society (The Free Press, 1995), which received a Critic's Choice Award and appeared on both the New York Times Notable Books list and Business Week Ten Best list for 1995. His most recent general interest publication is Luxury Fever (The Free Press, 1999). Professor Frank's books have been translated into eight languages.
     He has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Professorship (1987 – 1990), a Kenan Enterprise Award (1993), and a Merrill Scholars Program Outstanding Educator Citation (1991).

Ben. S. Bernanke, Princeton University

Professor Bernanke received his B.A. in economics from Harvard University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1979. He taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1979 to 1985 and moved to Princeton University in 1985, where he is the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, and where he is currently Chairman of the Economics Department. He has consulted for the Board of Governors of the European Central Bank and other central banks, and he serves on a U.S. State Department Committee that advises the Israeli government on economic policy. He is a Fellow of the Econometrics Society and a Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve System in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, and he is currently an advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
     Professor Bernanke's intermediate textbook, with Andrew Abel, Macroeconomics, Third Edition (Addison-Wesley, 1998) is a best seller in its field. He has authored more than 50 scholarly publications in macroeconomics, macroeconomic history, and finance. He has done significant research on the causes of the Great Depression, the role of financial markets and institutions in the business cycle, and measuring the effects of monetary policy on the economy. His two most recent books, both published by Princeton University Press, include Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience (with coauthors) and Essays on the Great Depression. He is a Coeditor of the NBER Macroeconomics Annual and the Journal of Business, and he serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Financial Intermediation; the Journal of Money, Credit , and Banking; the Quarterly Journal of Economics; and the Review of Economics and Statistics. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Macroeconomics. Professor Bernanke has taught principles of economics at both Stanford and Princeton.

Lars Osberg, Dalhousie University

Lars Osberg is currently the McCulloch Professor of Economics at Dalhousie University. He was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario. As an undergraduate, he attended Queen's University, Kingston and the London School of Economics and Political Science, graduating from Queen's in 1968. From 1968 to 1970 he served as a CUSO volunteer, working primarily with the Tanzania Sisal Corporation in Tanga, Tanzania. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1975.
     His first book was Economic Inequality in Canada (1981), which has been followed by eight others, most recently Vanishing Jobs: Canada's Changing Workplaces (1995) (with F. Wien & J. Grude), The Unemployment Crisis: All for Naught (1996) (with B. MacLean) and Hard Money, Hard Times (1998) (with P. Fortin). He is also the author of numerous refereed articles, book chapters, reviews, reports and miscellaneous publications. His major fields of research interest have been the measurement and determinants of poverty and economic well being, with particular emphasis in recent years on social policy and the implications of unemployment and structural change in labour markets. Among other professional responsibilities, he was President of the Canadian Economics Association in 1999/2000 and is now Review Editor for the Review of Income and Wealth and a member of the Executive Council of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth.

Melvin Cross, Dalhousie University

Melvin L. Cross received an A.A. from Dawson Community College in 1968, a B.A. from the University of Montana in 1970, an M.A. from Simon Fraser University in 1972, and a Ph.D. in economics from Texas A&M University in 1976. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Dalhousie University, which he joined in 1975. He also holds an adjunct appointment in the School of Resource and Environmental Studies and is an Associate Fellow in the foundation year of the University of King's College. In 1994-95, he was a Visiting Adjunct Associate Professor at Queen's University. His teaching and research interests are in the economics of natural and environmental resources and the history of economic thought. He has taught principles of economics throughout his career. He is an author or co-author of articles in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science, Canadian Public Policy, History of Political Economy, Marine Resource Economics, and other journals.

Brian MacLean, Laurentian University

Brian K. MacLean is an Associate Professor of Economics at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, where he has been Director of the Institute of Northern Ontario Research and Development and the organizer of an annual economic policy conference series. He speaks Japanese as a second language and has been a visiting professor at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan, and at Saitama University, just outside of Tokyo. He has edited Out of Control?: Canada in an Unstable Financial World (Lorimer, 1999), co-edited The Unemployment Crisis: All for Nought? (McGill-Queen's, 1996) and has published in the Cambridge Journal of Economics, Review of Income and Wealth, Canadian Business Economics, and other journals. His keen interest in economic policy issues is reflected in these publications and also in the monthly economics columns he has written for the National Post since February 2000. As an avid internet user, he publishes Canada's Economy in the Newspapers, an e-mail commentary on Canada's economic news coverage, and serves as webmaster for the Progressive Economics Forum.