ROBERT H. FRANK
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 intermediate economics textbook— Microeconomics and Behavior, Sixth Edition (Irwin /McGraw-Hill, 2006). 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.

BEN S. BERNANKE
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 served as Chairman of the Economics Department. He has consulted for the Board of Governors of the European Central Bank and other central banks, and he served on a U.S. State Department Committee that advises the Israeli government on economic policy. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 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 served for nearly 3 years on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. In June 2005 he was named as chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors.

Professor Bernanke's intermediate textbook, with Andrew Abel, Macroeconomics, Fourth Edition (Addison-Wesley, 2001) 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 the editor of the “American Economic Review” and has been the coeditor of the “NBER Macroeconomics Annual” and of “Economics Letters.”  He has served as associate editor for the “Journal of Financial Intermediation,” the “Quarterly Journal of Economics,” the “Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking,” and the “Review of Economics and Statistics.” Professor Bernanke has taught principles of economics at both Stanford and Princeton.