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Michael Frakes, A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law and Professo Skip to Content
Michael Frakes
Michael Frakes

A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law and Professor of Economics, Duke Law School

Academic Fellow Alumnus
2009-2011

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Michael Frakes is the A. Kenneth Pye Professor of Law and a Professor of Economics at Duke Law School. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was previously Associate Professor of Law and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at the Northwestern University School of Law from 2014 to 2016, and from 2011 to 2014, he was an Assistant Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. Michael is generally interested in empirical research in the areas of health law and innovation policy. His research in health is largely focused on understanding how certain legal and financial incentives affect the decisions of physicians and other health care providers. His research in innovation policy centers on the relationship between the financing of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and key aspects of its decision making. His research in innovation policy centers around the relationship between the financing of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and key aspects of its decision making.

Michael's scholarship has appeared in, or is forthcoming in, various economics and law & economics journals including the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and the American Law and Economics Review, along with various law reviews including the Stanford Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, the Duke Law Journal, and the Vanderbilt Law Review. He is currently serving as the Principal Investigator on an R01 award from the NIH, exploring the effects of immunizing physicians from medical liability on the extent and quality of the medical care they deliver.

Michael received his BS in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001, his JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2005, and a PhD in economics from MIT in 2009. He was an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Wilmington, Del., from 2005 to 2007.