Background
FRECH, Harry Edward III was born in 1946 in Street Louis, Missouri, United States of America.
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Harry Edward III FRECH
Edit ProfileEducation
Bachelor of Science (Industrial Engineering) University Missouri, 1968. Master of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy University of California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America, 1970, 1974.
Career
Economics, United States. Department Health Education and Welfare, 1970-1972. Acting Assistant Professor, Assistant Professor, Professor, University California Santa Barbara, 1973-1982.
Visiting Assistant Professor, Harvard University, 1976-1977.
Visiting Professor, University Chicago 1982. Professor of Economics, University California Santa Barbara, California, United States of America, since 1982.
Association Editor, El, 1980, 1981. Editorial Board, American Economic Review, since 1981.
Achievements
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My work can be summarised as using microeconomic theory to explain behaviour and institutions (property rights and contracts) in a wide range of settings and industries. The work is about equally divided between theoretical and empirical contributions. I have tried to use the concept of Pareto optimality as a benchmark, a means of communicating with the profession and a way of keeping my work at least potentially policy relevant.
Although much of the work is theoretical, I have been guided by the idea that economics is a science, not a branch of logic. Thus my theoretical work has been disciplined by a reference to the empirical world and has stressed economics rather than technique. I have
been strongly influenced by my teachers, Armen Alchian, Jack Hirshleifer, Earl Thompson and Sam Peitzman at University of California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America, and Wayne Leeman at Missouri, although my interests are more empirical and statistical than that list might suggest.
My earliest work was on human capital and the size distribution of income, based on Dutch and American data.
I next turned to the economics of health and health care, a lifelong interest. Much of this work deals with industrial organisation issues of the peculiar institutions in health care and imperfect competition in these markets. Later I branched out into the economics of property rights, writing on the Coase Theorem and its extensions and the property rights theory of the firm.
My interests then broadened to the regulation of insurance, land use controls, sociobiology and the oil industry. My latest work has been on topics related to antitrust policy, exclusive dealing, advertising as a public good, and strategic behaviour in oligopoly.
