Robert A. Pollak
Robert A. Pollak (born 1 December 1938) is an economist. Pollak has made contributions to the specification and estimation of consumer demand systems, social choice theory, the theory of the cost of living index, and since the early 1980s, to the economics of the family and to demography. He is currently the Hernreich Distinguished Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis, holding joint appointments in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences and in the Olin Business School. Early life and education Pollak was born in New York City. He graduated from Amherst College with a BA in history in 1960. He received his PhD in economics from MIT in 1964.Pollak is married to Vivian Pollak, a professor emerita of English at Washington University in St. Louis who writes on American poetry. They have two sons. Career Pollak began his career as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania in 1964. He spent the academic year 1968-1969 on leave from the University of Pennsylvania working as an economist at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington DC. Pollak was promoted to associate professor in 1968 and to professor in 1972. In 1983 he was named