About the Authors

James D. Gwartney was a professor emeritus of the department of economics at Florida State University, where he taught for fifty-three years. He was the lead author of Economics: Private and Public Choice (Cengage Learning, 2020), a widely used economic principles text now in its seventeenth edition. Professor Gwartney was also coauthor of the Fraser Institute’s annual report, Economic Freedom of the World, which provides information on the consistency of institutions and policies with economic freedom for 165 countries. His publications appeared in a variety of scholarly journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Education, Southern Economic Journal, and Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. From 1999–2000, he served as chief economist of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress. He was a past president of the Southern Economic Association and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. Dr. Gwartney passed away in January 2024.

Dwight R. Lee received his PhD from the University of California, San Diego, in 1972. He has served on the faculty at the University of Colorado, Virginia Tech University, George Mason University, and the University of Georgia, where he was the Ramsey Professor of Economics and Private Enterprise from 1985–2008. He was the William J. O’Neil Professor of Global Markets and Freedom at Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 2008–2014. He is currently an affiliated visiting faculty fellow in the Institute for the Study of Political Economy in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. Professor Lee’s research has covered a variety of areas, including the economics of the environment and natural resources; the economics of political decision-making; public finance; law and economics; and labor economics. Lee has published over 170 articles in academic journals and nearly 300 articles in magazines and newspapers; he has coauthored 14 books and been the contributing editor of five others. Lee has lectured at universities and conferences throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Central America, South America, Asia, and Africa. He was president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education from 1994–1995 and president of the Southern Economic Association from 1997–1998.

Tawni Hunt Ferrarini is a content consultant for the Gus A. Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education at Florida State University. She is the former R. W. Plaster Professor of Economic Education at Lindenwood University and was recognized as the university’s Scholar-Teacher of the Year for 2023–2024. Dr. Ferrarini is known nationally and internationally for her economic education work and her dynamic presentations. She specializes in informing diverse audiences about economic fundamentals, integrating economic reasoning into various disciplines, and using technology to increase audience engagement. Her reputation as an accomplished researcher, textbook author, presenter, and workshop leader contributed to her selection as the 2015 president of the National Association of Economic Educators and her receipt of the National Association of Economic Educators’ Technology Award and International Award. She serves on the advisory board of the Council on Economic Education (Japan) and regularly consults with nonprofits, including Junior Achievement USA, Economic Fundamentals Initiative (Eastern Europe and Central Asia), and the Korea Development Institute. Dr. Ferrarini publishes in journals of economic education, technology, and education. Her doctorate in economics is from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied under the 1993 Nobel laureate Douglass C. North.

Joseph P. Calhoun is a teaching professor in the department of economics at Florida State University and director of the university’s Gus A. Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education. He currently teaches principles of economics and personal finance classes. He created and leads Unconquered by Debt, an innovative financial wellness program sponsored by the Stavros Center. At no charge, undergraduate students can take workshops or use online resources to develop financial literacy. Dr. Calhoun regularly gives presentations at national teaching conferences on the effective use of media and technology in the classroom. A staunch supporter of study-abroad programs, he has taught in Florida State’s international programs in England, Italy, and Spain. Dr. Calhoun has received numerous teaching awards at Florida State, including the university’s Undergraduate Teaching Award. His doctoral degree is from the University of Georgia.

Jane Shaw Stroup (who also writes as Jane S. Shaw) is a writer and freelance editor. She is chairperson of the Raleigh-based James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, where she was previously president. Before that, Ms. Stroup was a senior fellow with the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman, Montana. Among other books, she coauthored with Michael Sanera Facts, Not Fear: Teaching Children About the Environment (Regnery Publishing, 1996). Earlier, she was an associate economics editor of Business Week. She received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Wellesley College and, in 2020, a master’s degree in history from North Carolina State University. She is a past president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, an editorial adviser to Econ Journal Watch and CL Press, a member of the Editorial Advisory Panel of Regulation, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Council of the Institute of Economic Affairs (London). She is the widow of Richard L. Stroup, a previous coauthor of this book.

Randall K. Filer is professor of economics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and, since 1993, visiting professor of economics/senior scholar at CERGE-EI, a joint workplace of Charles University and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Professor Filer served as president of the CERGE-EI Foundation, the largest supporter of economics education in the post-communist transition economies from 1999 until 2021. He directs the CERGE-EI Foundation Teaching Fellows and Distance Learning programs, which have provided economic education to over 275,000 college-level students at more than 200 universities in 28 post-communist countries. Professor Filer is president of the Economic Fundamentals Initiative (EFI), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting economic literacy in post-communist countries. He is a member of the Academic and Governing Boards of the International School of Economics (ISET) in Tbilisi, Georgia. Previously Professor Filer served as the Central and Eastern European Coordinator of the World-Bank sponsored Global Development Network. He is a research fellow of IZA (Bonn) and CESifo (Munich) and was a Wriston Fellow at the Manhattan Institute (NYC). Professor Filer graduated from Haverford College and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the ACE program of the European Union, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others and has appeared in leading professional journals including The American Economic Review, The Journal of Political Economy, The Review of Economics and Statistics, The European Economic Review and The Economics of Transition. Professor Filer has twice been a Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic as well as a visiting scholar at the Economics Institute, Zagreb, Croatia. In 2023-24 he received a Fulbright Global Scholar award, which enabled him to spend two months in each of Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. His commentary has been featured in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BBC, ABC and Good Morning Saudi Arabia.