Money and Banking
Spring 2010
Instructor Information James Murray, Ph.D. Office: 403W Wimberly Hall Phone: 608-406-4068 Email: murray.jame@uwlax.edu Meeting Time / Location 8:50am - 9:45am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Room 114 Carl Wimberly Hall. Because the door to the classroom is in the front of the room, arriving late can be very disruptive to the class. Please be respectful of your instructor and your fellow classmates and arrive before class begins. Course Description An introduction to money, monetary policy, and banking, and their roles in the modern market economy. Attention is devoted to the current institutional structure in the U.S. and differing views on the relationship between money and the level of economic activity. Prerequisites: ECO 110, ECO 120. Course Goals The purpose of this course is to introduce students to financial and monetary markets and examine them within the context of the functioning of the macroeconomy. The goal is to provide students with an analytical framework for identifying problems in financial markets and/or the macroeconomy and thinking about appropriate economic policy that influences financial and monetary markets to remedy such problems. Learning Objectives For successful learning, it is important that you understand why we do the reading, lectures, assignments, etc, we do. Everything we do in this class is meant to achieve the learning objectives below. It would be useful for you to pay careful attention to what learning objectives the lectures and assignments are meant to achieve.
Course Resources Textbook: Mishkin, Frederick S. Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets. Eighth Edition. Addison-Wesley.
Internet Resource: MyEconLab. This is an online economics course learning tool that complements our textbook. It provides many optional and required exercises to enhance your knowledge of economics, and detailed immediate feedback on your work. You are required to purchase a subscription for $45 online. Regular homework assignments will require you to use MyEconLab. REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS: You may register for MyEconLab online at https://www.myeconlab.com. When prompted use course ID: XL0G-D1VD-001Y-73L2. Under enrollment options, you need to select 'Buy Now'. Since you get the textbook for free from textbook rental, select 'MyEconLab without Pearson eText'.
Class website: eco301/spring2010/. All material handed out in class will be posted on the class website. Grades, announcements and other communication will be done through Desire2Learn. Office Hours Regular office hours are 2:30pm-3:45pm Monday through Thursday. These are times when you can drop by announced and expect me to be in my office. If you would like to schedule an appointment for an alternative time, please send me an e-mail. Frequently keeping up with the material usually requires frequent office visits, so I feel frequently coming to my office for questions is essential to your success.
Office hours are not a substitute for attending class. Except when missing class for very extreme circumstances that were promptly discussed with me, it is not acceptable to use office hours to ask questions about material you missed while not in attendance.
Outside of my regularly scheduled classes and office hours, my availability changes all the time. You can visit my calendar at calendar.html. It is constantly updated. OFFICE HOURS SATISFACTION GUARANTEED! I guarantee that coming to office hours to ask questions on material you don't completely understand will increase your grade in the class. If you come to office hours and still get questions wrong on the exam about the topic we discussed, I will give you those missed points back! This guarantee is subject to the following conditions:
Assessment Learning will be assessed through weekly quizzes, homework, and exams. The grading breakdown will be:
Grade Breakdown
I reserve the right to scale every person's grade up by the same amount on any graded item in the event that much of the class falls short of the scale above. However, even if the grades are significantly low, there is no guarantee that I will ever do this. Quizzes / Homework / In-class exercises There will be many announced quizzes, unannounced (pop) quizzes, and in-class exercises given throughout the semester. Adequate preparation for these will involve reading ahead for class and completing homework assignments on time. Classes will begin with your questions so that you can resolve any problems with assigned work before the quiz begins. Quizzes may sometimes be open book and/or open note. Sometimes in-class exercises will be given, some of which must be done in small groups. Homework assignments will be given almost every week. Exams There will be three midterm exams and one cumulative final exam. Each exam is worth 20% of final course grade. All exams require a calculator, so be sure to bring a calculator to class on exam days. The calculator must not have non-calculator features (ex: internet, text messaging, telephone). You may not share calculators with other students. If you forget a calculator, it is certainly possible to make all necessary computations with a pencil and paper. The three midterm exams will be administered during regular class time and the final exam will be administered during final exam week according to the University final exam schedule. The exam dates are as follows:
Economics Department Seminar Summaries The Economics Department regularly brings in speakers that present new research in economics that they are in the process of creating. This is a unique opportunity to see where economics knowledge is expanding beyond your textbooks, right from the source where knowledge is being created. You will be required to attend at least two of these seminars and write a 300-400 word summary. I will be taking attendance at these seminars to ensure you actually attended the seminar you are writing about. It is your responsibility to make sure I have counted you in attendance if you are there.
EXTRA CREDIT OPPORTUNITY: You will also be able to earn extra credit for attending and summarizing an additional two seminars. If there are seminars beyond these four, you are of course still welcome to attend!
Note, most of these seminars may not be specifically about money and banking. This is expected. Regardless of the 300-400 level economics courses you may currently be taking, it is important for economics students of your level to begin developing an interest and knowledge in advanced topics of economics in a variety of fields. The schedule for the seminars will be posted on the class website when dates and times are known. The seminars are usually around 4pm on Fridays. Debate Presentation Work in groups of 5 and write and act out a debate on one of the seven questions below. Each group must work on a different topic, and your group must have your topic approved by me. The topics will be assigned to groups by first come, first serve. We will schedule the debate at least two weeks after you have been assigned your topic.
Your group is in charge of researching the question and finding interesting questions and issues to bring up during your presentation. The presentation should take a debate form. One or two moderators can introduce topics, provide background knowledge, and ask questions to the debaters. There should be at least two debaters, though there can be more, each providing a different point of view on the topic. It may be useful, though not required, to have PowerPoint slides either for the moderator to introduce ideas, or for the debaters to answer the questions. I advise you to have as few slides as possible, however; possibly only using the slides to show graphs.
The whole presentation should be scripted (perhaps word for word, or just note card reminders) and practiced before presenting in class. All members of the group should have roughly equal speaking time. The entire debate should be 8-10 minutes long. Going a shorter or longer period of time will result in a grade reduction. All debates will video taped, and the videos will be posted online for all to see. Accordingly, please dress and act professional, be informative, but also feel free to be entertaining.
In the seven topics below, each one gives you a guide to types of questions you can ask and places you may find useful information. You will likely need to research on your own other sources for information. You do not need to answer all the questions that are suggested in the descriptions, and you may also add your own sub-topics. Much of the raw data you need to answer the question can be obtained from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) data repository available at https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/.
Attendance Attendance is required to receive credit for quizzes, in-class exercises, and exams. However, if you need to miss a class day or exam day because of illness or emergency you can be excused and arrangements can be made for you to make up missed word. The University is especially concerned with the possible spread of H1N1 influenza. To reduce the chance of spreading the disease, the University recommends that if you experience two or more symptoms of flu that you not come to class nor stay in dormitories, but rather go home where you have contact with few people as possible, and return only after you are symptom free for 24 hours without medication. E-mail Guidelines I insist on the following e-mail etiquette rules (many of these are also recommended by the College of Business Administration). Failure to adhere to these guidelines will result in a reply with a friendly reminder to follow these e-mail guidelines.
Classroom Behavior Please adhere to these behavior guidelines:
Disabilities Any student with a documented disability (e.g., physical, learning, psychiatric, vision, or hearing, etc.) who needs to arrange reasonable accommodations must contact the instructor and the Disability Resource Services office (165 Murphy Library, 785-6900) at the beginning of the semester. Students who are currently using the Disability Resource Services office will have a copy of a contract that verifies they are qualified students with disabilities who have documentation on file in the Disability Resource Services office. It is the student's responsibility to communicate their needs with the instructor in a timely manner. Academic Dishonesty I follow the policy stated University Academic Handbook with regard to cheating and academic dishonesty. The student handbook can be found online at https://www.uwlax.edu/studentlife/eagle_eye.htm. In the event a student is caught cheating I will pursue the harshest penalty that the University will allow, regardless of how small the offense may appear.
Preliminary Topics Schedule Below is a detailed list of topics and readings for this class. This is a preliminary schedule; depending on time constraints and the topics the class finds most interesting, we may choose to not cover some of the items below, cover items that are not shown below, or re-arrange the schedule. Details about the dates these topics are covered will be posted on the calendar on the class website, eco301/spring2010/calendar.html
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