Robert H. Frank

Robert H. Frank's economic guidebook unlocks everyday design enigmas International Herald Tribune:

"Have you ever wondered why some cars have fuel fillers on the left, and others on the right? Why your VCR is stuffed with functions that you'll never use? Why women button their clothes from the left, and men from the right? Or why CD cases are smaller than DVD cases when the discs are the same size? We encounter puzzles like these every day. They're not life-threatening or planet-imperiling, but they don't make sense, not at first, anyway. The American economist, Robert H. Frank, has devoted a book, 'The Economic Naturalist,' to unraveling them. His explanations for what he calls 'everyday enigmas' are rooted in economic theory, but many of them also illuminate anomalies in the design of the things that fill our lives. The issues explored in the book were suggested by the students on the introductory economics course Frank teaches at Cornell University. He asked them to find economic explanations for things that flummoxed them in daily life. Frank, who has flirted with design before, notably in his self-explanatorily entitled book, 'Luxury Fever: Why money fails to satisfy in an era of success,' then devised his own answers to the most interesting questions. His objective was to show that, beneath the jargon and mathematical formalism, economics is grounded in common sense."