Success and luck: A personal perspective - The Samuel M. Levin Endowed Economics Endowed Lecture
Robert H. Frank, is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management and the co-director of the Paduano Seminar in business ethics at NYU's Stern School of Business. His "Economic View" column appears monthly in The New York Times.
Frank will present Success and Luck: A Personal Perspective as the keynote speaker at the Professor Samuel M. Levin Endowed Economics Award and Endowed Lecture at 1 p.m. on Friday, April 17, 2015.
The lecture will take place in the Alumni House located at 441 Gilmour Mall. The event is free and open to the public. A merit award, based on a competitive paper, will be given to an outstanding graduate student majoring in economics.
Robert Frank's Lecture is based on his as-yet-unpublished book, which has the working title of "Success and Luck: A Personal Perspective." He begins with the observation that luck often plays a substantial role in one's success. As an example, a person born in Somalia, regardless of his talents and determination, has much less chance of material success than someone born in a middle-class family in the U.S. People who have had great success tend to minimize the importance of luck in their good fortune, but in this, they are generally mistaken. Professor Frank then points out that wealthy people tend to get caught up in an "arms race" in which they measure themselves against the material possessions and consumption of other wealthy people. If most rich people spend $200,000 on their daughter's wedding, a rich individual feels that he must do so as well; he would be unhappy and feel inadequate if he spent less.
However, if most rich people spent only $25,000 on their daughter's wedding, a rich person would feel good if he also spent only $25,000. Yet society would be much better off if this money were spent on things that increase opportunity and productivity for others - for example on education or health care. Therefore Professor Frank proposes to change the tax system by replacing the income tax with a progressive consumption tax. This would change the pattern of society's spending from wasteful consumption expenditures to investment in human capital, and increase our nation's economic growth.
About the Samuel M. Levin Endowed Economics Award
The Professor Samuel M. Levin Economics Award Fund was created by donations to the university to honor the distinguished educational leadership and scholarly contributions of the late Professor Emeritus Samuel M. Levin. Among his many books is Malthus and the Conduct of Life (1967). He was also author of many essays on education, labor, population, and technology. Professor Levin served the university and its predecessor institutions for 43 years. Initially in charge of all social science teaching at the College of the City of Detroit (later, Wayne University), he was the first Chairman of the Department of Economics, a position he occupied until 1953. His papers are collected in the Reuther Archives of the University.