Essentials of Economics

Meets students where they are. Makes economics matter.

Written by Dirk Mateer, Lee Coppock, and Brian O’Roark―three of the leading economics instructors in the country―Essentials of Economics brings insights and practices refined over a combined 50 years in the classroom to a survey text that is student-centered, from the ground up.

Dirk Mateer is a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin, and an award-winning instructor. He has been featured in the Great Teachers in Economics series and he was also the inaugural winner of the Economic Communicator Contest sponsored by the Association of Private Enterprise Education. Previously, while he was at Penn State, he received the George W. Atherton Award, the university’s highest teaching award, and was voted the best overall teacher in the Smeal College of Business by the readers of Critique Magazine. Then, at the University of Arizona, he received the best large class lecture award in the Eller College of Management. He also founded the Journal of Economics Teaching in 2015 in order to create a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to innovative instruction in economics. He is also the author of Economics in the Movies (Cengage, 2014).

Lee Coppock is a professor and undergraduate director in the Department of Economics at the University of Virginia, where he has taught more than 15,000 students principles of macroeconomics. He has received several teaching awards, including the 2017 Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished teaching Award from the Southern Economics Association, and the 2018 UVA Alumni Distinguised Professor Award. Before teaching at UVA, Professor Coppock taught for nine years at Hillsdale College, where he honed his skills in small classes of 10–15 students, giving him an understanding of each student’s point of view. Now teaching more than 1,000 students in a class, he applies what he learned in those small classes through participation, captivating imagery, and relevant stories that draw students' attention.

Brian O’Roark is a university professor of economics at Robert Morris University, where he has won the President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching and the School of Business Teaching Innovation Award. Additionally, he has won the Middle Atlantic Association of Colleges of Business Administration’s Undergraduate Teaching Innovation Award, and the Best in Class Teaching Award from the National Economics Teaching Association. Professor O'Roark's research focuses on teaching economics, including a series of articles on the role economic education plays on how members of Congress vote and various articles on teaching economics using superheroes. His list of books includes the textbook Essentials of Economics, published by W. W. Norton, Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World: What Superheroes Can Tell Us About Economics, published by Oxford University Press, and Superheroes and Economics: The Shadowy World of Capes, Masks and Invisible Hands, published by Routledge Publishing. He is also a contributor to The Ultimate Guide for Principles of Economics, The Ultimate Instructor’s Resource Guide for Essentials of Economics, and Smartwork for Principles of Economics. Professor O'Roark is the new editor for the Journal of Economics Teaching and the editor for Routledge Publishing’s Economics and Popular Culture series.