Bruno S. Frey (born May 4, 1941 in Basel, Switzerland) is a Swiss economist and a professor at the University of Zurich. He may be best known for his critique of Homo economicus or economic man, arguing that it places excessive emphasis on extrinsic motivation rather than intrinsic motivation. Frey has written, co-written or edited more than a dozen books and has written more than 350 journal articles, mostly in economics journals, but also in political science, sociology and psychology. In 2011, Frey was criticised for and admitted to self-plagiarism on his work relating to the Titanic disaster.[1][2]
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He studied economics at the University of Basel, obtaining a doctorate in economics in 1965. In 1969 he was appointed as an associate professor of economics at the University of Basel. From 1970 to 1977, he was a full professor of public finance at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Frey was appointed as a full professor of economics at the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics (IEW) of the University of Zurich (UZH) in 1977.
Frey was also appointed managing editor of Kyklos, a Swiss journal on political economy, in 1969. He maintains that position to this day.
His first book, Umweltökonomie (Environmental Economics), was published in Göttingen in 1972. During his career, he has been a prolific author, publishing hundreds of articles in economics as well as in a number of different fields including sociology, political science, and psychology. Some of his work has reached the top journals of the economics profession, such as The Journal of Political Economy and the American Economic Review. He is one of the most cited authors in economics according to Research Papers in Economics.
During 2010 and 2011, Bruno Frey, along with coauthors Benno Torgler and David Savage, had four of their articles concerning the Titanic disaster published in academic journals: “Behavior under Extreme Conditions: The Titanic Disaster.” in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, “Interaction of natural survival instincts and internalized social norms exploring the Titanic and Lusitania disasters.” in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Noblesse oblige? Determinants of survival in a life-and-death situation.” in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations, and “Who perished on the Titanic? The importance of social norms.” in Rationality and Society. Soon after these articles began to get published, several weblogs reported on a possible violation of academic integrity by Bruno Frey and his coauthors concerning these works.[1][3]
On May 3, 2011, editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives David Autor wrote a letter to Bruno Frey stating that he was informed of this possible self-plagiarism by his readers, and that previously he had only been aware of one of Frey's other articles concerning the Titanic Disaster. Frey offered his apologies to David Autor in a public letter,[2] accepting the charges and asking the editor not to punish junior author David Savage who was a PhD student of Benno Torgler at the time.
For this offence, Bruno Frey, Benno Torgler, and David Savage were placed on a list of plagiarism offenders at Research Papers in Economics.[4]
A complete list of his articles, books, chapters, and other writings can be found here.