About the Author

Christopher R. Thomas is an associate professor of economics at University of South Florida (USF), where he has spent the past 40 years and held the Exide Professorship of Sustainable Enterprise from 2004 through 2010. Before beginning his academic career at USF in 1982, Professor Thomas worked as an energy economist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He now teaches managerial economics to undergraduates and MBA students in both traditional and executive formats. Professor Thomas has published numerous articles on government regulation of industry and antitrust issues and is coeditor of the Oxford Handbook in Managerial Economics. Professor Thomas lives with his wife in Brooksville, Florida, where he enjoys hobby ranching and playing bad golf.


Professor Emeritus of Economics at Texas A&M University. He spent 30 years in the Department of Economics at Texas A&M, where he served as Department Head from 1977 through 1981, and held the Rex B. Grey University Professorship of Free Enterprise from 1981 through 1985. Professor Maurice published numerous articles on microeconomic theory in the top economic journals. He co-wrote two scholarly books on natural resource depletion: The Doomsday Myth and The Economics of Mineral Extraction. He also wrote with Charles Ferguson, and later Owen Phillips, the widely used intermediate level microeconomics textbook Economic Analysis, which was published from 1971 to 1996. Professor Maurice retired to Gainesville, Florida, where he lived until his death in the Spring of 1999.