Frank's current research focuses on a number of areas within the field of the Economics of IT and Digitization. In the area of innovation and production for free, he is studying the value of open source software (with Shane Greenstein), the drivers of online word-of-mouth (with Christoph Riedl), and various aspects of digital economies (with Magnus Torfason and Mikolaj Piskorski). In the area of network effects in technology adoption, he is exploring supply-chain based network effects in enterprise IT adoption (with Kristina McElheran). In the area of generating strategic predictions from unstructured big data, he has researched the relationship between social media and stock market movements. His research utilizes large datasets derived from online social networks, financial market information, and surveys of enterprise IT usage. Frank's prior research focused on Influence, Trust, and Privacy in Social Networks.