About the Australian author

NILSS OLEKALNS
Professor Olekalns received his BEc with Honours in economics from the University of Adelaide in 1982 and completed an MEc at the Australian National University in 1984. He was awarded his PhD in economics in 1993 from La Trobe University. He began teaching in the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne in 1994, where he has lectured to first-year students in macroeconomics. He has been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund, a guest lecturer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore and an invited lecturer for the Australian and New Zealand School of Government.
Professor Olekalns has published on a variety of macroeconomic topics including fiscal and monetary policies, exchange rates, output and inflation volatility and interest rates. He has also written articles on applied microeconomics, including an analysis of the impact of anti-smoking policies in Australia that was awarded the Economic Society of Australia’s prize for the best paper published in the Economic Record in 2000. His papers have also appeared in the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Macroeconomics, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and the Southern Economic Journal, as well as many other international journals. He has received numerous awards for his teaching, including the inaugural Edward Wood Prize for Teaching Excellence. He is currently Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne.

About the US authors

BEN S. BERNANKE
Professor Bernanke received his BA in economics from Harvard University in 1975 and his PhD in economics from MIT in 1979. He taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1979 to 1985 and moved to Princeton University in 1985, where he was named the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, and where he served as Chairman of the Economics Department. Professor Bernanke was sworn in on 1 February 2006 as Chairman and a member of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve System. Professor Bernanke also serves as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the system’s principal monetary policy-making body. He was appointed a member of the board for a full 14-year term, which expires on 31 January 2020, and to a four-year term as Chairman, which expired on 31 January 2010. Before his appointment as Chairman, Professor Bernanke was Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from June 2005 to January 2006. Professor Bernanke has authored more than 50 scholarly publications in macroeconomics, macroeconomic history and finance. He has done significant research on the causes of the Great Depression, the role of financial markets and institutions in the business cycle and measuring the effects of monetary policy on the economy. Professor Bernanke has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sloan Fellowship, and he is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as the Director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and as a member of the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee. In July 2001 he was appointed Editor of the American Economic Review. Professor Bernanke’s work with civic and professional groups includes having served two terms as a member of the Montgomery Township (NJ) Board of Education.

ROBERT H. FRANK
Professor Frank is the Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University in the US, where he has taught since 1972. His ‘Economic Scene’ column appears monthly in The New York Times. After receiving his BS from Georgia Tech in 1966, he taught maths and science for two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal. He received his MA in statistics in 1971 and his PhD in economics in 1972 from the University of California at Berkeley. During leaves of absence from Cornell, he has served as chief economist for the Civil Aeronautics Board (1978–1980), as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1992–1993) and as Professor of American Civilization at l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (2000–2001). Professor Frank is the author of a bestselling intermediate economics textbook, Microeconomics and Behavior, eighth edition (McGraw-Hill, 2010). He has published on a variety of subjects, including price and wage discrimination, public utility pricing, the measurement of unemployment spell lengths and the distributional consequences of direct foreign investment. His research has focused on rivalry and cooperation in economic and social behaviour. His books on these themes, which include Choosing the Right Pond (Oxford, 1995), Passions Within Reason (W. W. Norton, 1988) and What Price the Moral High Ground? (Princeton, 2004), have been translated into 10 languages. The Winner-Take-All Society (The Free Press, 1995), co-authored with Philip Cook, received a Critic’s Choice Award, was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times and was included in Business Week’s list of the 10 best books of 1995. Luxury Fever (The Free Press, 1999) was named on the Knight-Ridder Best Books list for 1999. Professor Frank has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Professorship (1987–1990), a Kenan Enterprise Award (1993) and a Merrill Scholars Program Outstanding Educator Citation (1991). He is a co-recipient of the 2004 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. He was awarded the Johnson School’s Stephen Russell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004 and the school’s Apple Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005. His introductory microeconomics course has helped more than 6000 enthusiastic economic naturalists to graduate over the years.

About the digital authors

Dr George Chen gained his doctorate in economics from Monash University, where he taught principles of macroeconomics from 2008 to 2009. He is currently a lecturer in economics at the University of New England (UNE), where he teaches undergraduate courses in introductory macroeconomics and current macroeconomic issues, as well as advanced macroeconomics at the postgraduate level. He has received multiple teaching awards from both universities and is a frequent visiting lecturer at universities in China, including Harbin Engineering University, Qingdao Technological University (Qingdao College), Shandong Institute of Business and Technology, and Xian International University.     
His research has appeared in Small Business Economics, International Review of Applied Economics and Australasian Journal of Regional Studies, among other publications. He also served as a referee for leading field journals such as Energy Policy, Australian Journal of Management and International Journal of Emerging Markets. His current research interests include new Keynesian economics and new economic geography.

Dr Sang-Wook (Stanley) Cho has been a senior lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of New South Wales since 2006. He has a BA in International Economics from Seoul National University in South Korea, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota in the USA. His research interests are the dynamic macroeconomics of savings and retirement as well as international economics. He teaches various undergraduate and postgraduate courses in macroeconomics.

Dr Paul Crompton is currently in the economics group at the University of Western Australia Business School. His research interests are concentrated in the area of mineral and energy markets. His PhD focused on various aspects of the global iron ore and steel industries, and he has completed several large consulting projects on the economics of mineral and energy markets, including the development of a variety of forecasting models.
Paul has held positions at the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, the University of Tasmania and the University of Western Australia. He has published many book chapters and journal articles focusing on various aspects of mineral and energy markets. In addition he has made several conference presentations covering these fields.
Examples of Paul's recent work include the development of a global iron ore and steel forecasting model, an iron ore supply model using linear programming techniques, several intensity-of-use models for steel consumption, and the estimation of technical efficiency at the plant level using a database of steel plants from around the world.
With his expertise in macroeconomics and trade, Paul is interested in the relationship between the macroeconomy and mineral and energy markets.

Dr Mark Melatos is a senior lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney, where he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in macroeconomics and international trade.  Mark is also currently Associate Dean Postgraduate Coursework in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Mark’s research focuses on international trade theory and policy; for example, the optimal design of regional trade agreements. His research has appeared in the European Economic Review, World Economy, Economics Letters and Review of International Economics. He has worked with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission on trade policy issues.
Mark has held numerous visiting positions internationally, including at the OECD, Copenhagen Business School and York University, as well as other universities in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. His work has been supported by research grants from the Australian Research Council, Danish Research Council and European Commission.