Professor Frank received his B.S. 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 and his Ph.D. in economics in 1972 from The University of California at 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 a leave of absence from Cornell he served as chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board (1978-1980), a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1992-93), and Professor of American Civilization at l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (2000-01).

Professor Frank is the author of a best-selling Principles of Economics textbook with Ben Bernanke (Second Edition Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2004). 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. 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, Luxury Fever (The Free Press, 1999), was named to the Knight-Ridder Best Books list for 1999. 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). Professor Frank's introductory microeconomics course has graduated more than 5,000 enthusiastic economic naturalists over the years.