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“One of the great writers of economics,” Robert Frank, will visit Eastern Kentucky University on Thursday, April 5, to discuss “Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy.”

Frank’s remarks, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. in O’Donnell Hall of the Whitlock Building, are part of the University’s year-long Chautauqua lecture series with the theme of “Transformations.” The event is free and open to the public.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Georgia Tech, Frank spent two years teaching math and science as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Nepal. He later attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned his master’s degree in statistics and a doctoral degree in economics.

Frank is the author of nearly a dozen books, which have been translated into 23 languages. His book “The Winner-Take-All Society,” co-authored with Philip Cook, received a Critic’s Choice Award, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times, and was included in Business Week’s list of the top 10 books of 1995.

Frank’s “Economic View” column appeared monthly in The New York Times for more than a decade. He has also published papers in the American Economic Review, Econometrica and the Journal of Political Economy, and currently works as a Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and professor of economics at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. Frank is perhaps best known for theories that have proven highly influential in the field of economics, including the “positional arm race,” “winner-take-all” and “prisoner’s dilemma.”

The Frank lecture will be sponsored by College of Business and Technology, the Department of Government and Economics, and the Center for Economic Development, Entrepreneurship and Technology.

For more information about the Chautauqua lecture series, visit www.chautauqua.eku.eduor contact Chautauqua Lecture Coordinator Erik Liddell at erik.liddell@eku.edu.