Instructor: N. E. Cameron
Contact Info: Office: 235
Email: cameron@ms.umanitoba.ca
Website for the course: www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/economics/cameron/751
Office hours: MW 1.30 to 2.30, but I am generally available in my office (or
nearby in Room 239) other than during or just before this class, so don’t feel
restricted to the posted hours.
Objectives: This course is the second
half of the sequence of 750 and 751 that make up advanced monetary
economics. For the most part, monetary
economics is a complement to modern macroeconomics, fleshing out and providing
microeconomic underpinnings for some propositions about macrofinancial
arrangements (such as a payment system) that are just asserted or glossed over
in the more aggregated macro models.
Some of the fleshing out has to do with the special role of money and
money-like assets in a modern economy, some of it has to do with the detailed
structure and functioning of financial markets. We will see examples of each.
750 concentrates mainly on the microeconomics of monetary
arrangements. 751 concentrates on more
applied issues of how financial structure affects and is affected by the
conduct of stabilization policy. This
course should leave you familiar with the main approaches used to address financial
structure and monetary policy, and able to apply those approaches to relevant
situations in problems and a final exam.
Course
responsibilities and evaluation: You will be responsible for
(a) three assignments (20 %)
(b) a term paper, to be handed in by November 30 (20 %)
(c) a 3-hour final examination (50 %)
(d) two class presentations of parts of the course material (10%)
Early drafts of the term paper that are well organized and legible will get
comments and suggestions before final submission (just like most journal
articles).
Term
paper: I expect that your term paper will be an empirical exercise extending
one of the many empirical applications in the reading list, but feel free to
suggest other topics if you wish. Just
get my approval beforehand. “Extending”
can mean replicating with more recent data, or data from a country not yet
included in the empirical research, or using different research methods or
different econometric specifications.
These amount to tests for robustness, which is always a useful exercise.