Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and also Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1987. His book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better was a New York Times best-seller. Malcolm Gladwell called Tyler's latest book, The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream, "brilliant." In a recent poll by The Economist, he was named one of the most influential economists of the last decade, and in 2011 Bloomberg BusinessWeek dubbed him "America's Hottest Economist." Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of its "Top 100 Global Thinkers" of 2011. He hosts Conversations with Tyler and co-writes the Marginal Revolution blog with Alex Tabarrok. He is the co-author with Alex of Modern Principles: Microeconomics and Modern Principles: Macroeconomics, two introductory textbooks.

Joana Girante is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Arizona State University, where she also serves as the Online Course Coordinator. Formerly, she was on the faculty at the University of Minho (Portugal). Joana currently teaches between 500 and 1,000 students per semester in a mixture of in-person, online, and hybrid courses in principles of economics (micro and macro). Her research focuses on evaluating the efficacy of novel teaching methods. She sees economics everywhere and is passionate about teaching her students how to use economics to interpret the world around them and make better-informed decisions. Joana obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from North Carolina State University (2008) and MS (2001) and BS (1998) degrees in International Trade and in International Relations from the University of Minho.