John B. Taylor is one of the field’s most inspiring teachers. As the Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University, Professor Taylor teaches a yearly introductory economics course about which students are wildly enthusiastic. His distinctive instructional methods have made him a legend among students and have won him both the Hoagland and the Rhodes prizes for teaching excellence. As a recent Wall Street Journal article put it, Taylor’s ‘sober appearance . . . belies a somewhat zany teaching style’. Few of his students forget how he first illustrated a shift of the demand curve — by dressing up as a California raisin and dancing to ‘Heard it Through the Grapevine’— or how he proved that the supply and demand model actually works by having student buyers and sellers call out live bids to him in the classroom. It is this gift for clear explanations and memorable illustrations that makes his textbook so useful to students.

Professor Taylor is also widely recognised for his research. He has created formulae for wage and price setting and models for economic policy evaluation. One of his well-known research contributions is a rule, now widely called the Taylor Rule, which is used at central banks around the world. He is currently Vice President of the American Economic Association and is undertaking research on why economic expansions are becoming longer.

Taylor has an active public service career, having held several high-profile policy positions. He has served as economic advisor to the Governor of his state (California), to the US Congressional Budget Office and to the President of the United States. He is also asked for his advice by policymakers abroad. He has travelled to meet with heads of the central banks of Brazil, Chile, Greece, Indonesia, Mexico, Japan, Turkey, Russia and the European Monetary Union.

Professor Taylor began his career at Princeton, where he graduated with highest honours in economics. He then received his PhD from Stanford and taught at Columbia, Yale and Princeton before returning to Stanford where he now teaches.

Imad Moosa is currently a Professor and the Head of Economics and Finance Department at La Trobe University. He obtained his BA, MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.

Professor Moosa spent the earlier part of his career as a professional economist, an investment banker and a financial journalist. He has also served as an economist on the staff of the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. Since he became an academic at the end of 1991, he has published a number of books and more than 100 papers in economics and finance. His papers have appeared in the Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Futures Markets, IMF Staff Papers, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Comparative Economics and Journal of Development Economics, as well as other international journals.