G. Dirk Mateer is a senior fellow at the Civitas Institute, and the director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program at the School of Civic Leadership at UT Austin. He is also professor of instruction in the Department of Economics.

In addition, he helps develop UT’s OnRamps microeconomics course for high school students, and is a senior teaching fellow in the Financial Responsibility and Economic Education program, both joint projects of the Civitas Institute and the Department of Economics. He is the coauthor of two textbooks, Essentials of Economics (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, and 2021), and Principles of Economics (W. W. Norton & Company, 2013, 2017, and 2020); and the author of Economics in the Movies, (Cengage Learning, 2004).

Mateer has been awarded numerous teaching awards including at Penn State University where he was voted the best overall teacher in the Smeal College of Business, at the University of Arizona, where he received the University’s Koffler Teaching Prize, a quadrennial award for his contributions in economic education, and at UT Austin, where he received the Kenneth G. Elzinga Distinguished Teaching Award from the Southern Economic Association. He has an M.S. and Ph.D. in economics from Florida State University.