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.

Lionel Frost is an associate professor in the School of Business at La Trobe University. He studied economics and economic history and received his BEc, PhD and DipEd from Monash University. He has taught courses in introductory microeconomics for several years, teaching the basic principles thoroughly and always applying them to local examples that are familiar to first-year university students. Students have responded positively to his methods and each year in independent surveys they have rated his teaching as well above average, even for La Trobe’s outstanding Department of Economics and Finance.

Associate Professor Frost is a productive and innovative researcher. He was awarded the S. J. Butlin Prize for his PhD thesis by the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand in 1986 and was co-winner of the Dyos Prize in Urban History, awarded by the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester, in 1994. Many of his research papers, on issues such as the environmental impact of city growth in Australia, North America and the Third World, have appeared in international journals such as Urban History, Journal of Urban History and Agricultural History. Microeconomics 2e is his sixth book; his previous book traced the development of the Carlton Football Club as an example of a successful business enterprise. Associate Professor Frost’s current research interests lie in regional development and the economics of professional sport.