Materials for courses taught
by Chris Bowdler
Ř
Information for
Oriel PPE and HE students
Convenor: Chris Bowdler
BACK TO DEPT INTRANET PAGE FOR MONEY
AND BANKING
RUBRIC
The role of money in general equilibrium models. Aggregate models of
price and output fluctuations. The role of banks and other financial
intermediaries. Models of monetary policy. Inflation targeting and other policy
regimes. Money and public finance. The transmission of monetary policy to asset
prices and exchange rates.
The paper will be set in
two parts. Candidates will be required to show knowledge on both parts of the
paper. Part A will comprise questions requiring analysis of specific models.
Part B will comprise essay questions requiring discussion of the theoretical
and empirical literature.
TEACHING ARRANGEMENTS AND ASSESSMENT
The course will consist
of 16 lectures. In the academic year 2012-13 there will be 12 lectures by Chris
Bowdler and 4 lectures by James Forder. Lectures slides are available below.
Students will attend eight tutorials or classes. A list of possible tutorial
topics, readings and essay titles/discussion questions is provided below.
Please note the majority of students taking Money and Banking do their
tutorials in Michaelmas term because fewer tutors are available in the Hilary term.
The course will be
assessed by a three hour written examination. As specified in the course
rubric, the paper will comprise two parts. Part A questions will refer to
specific theoretical models emphasised in the lecture sequence below, and
candidates will be required to show knowledge of such models in their answers.
Part B questions will be more applied and could require discussion of some
aspect of the empirical literature, or a debate relating to a recent episode in
the conduct of monetary policy (theoretical material will be of relevance in
answering such questions). Candidates will be required to answer three
questions in total, including at least one from each part of the paper. Please
note that in order to reflect a shift in the composition of the course
lectures, the style and number of questions in part A of the exam paper is
different to that in part A of the 2008 and 2009 past papers. The best guides
to the style of the 2013 exam paper are the 2010, 2011 and 2013 past papers.
Past papers are
available via OXAM. Note that the paper
was set under the current rubric for the first time in 2008.
PREREQUISITES
The course builds on
material taught in the Prelims and Finals courses for Microeconomics and
Macroeconomics and assumes familiarity with such topics as expected profit
maximisation by firms, the ASAD and ISLM models of aggregate fluctuations,
money demand and money supply and the credit/money supply multiplier
multiplier.
TEXTBOOKS
There is no single
textbook for the course, but the following books will prove useful for most of
the topics covered:
Walsh, C. Monetary Theory and Policy (2nd
edition). MIT Press,
Romer, D. Advanced Macroeconomics (3rd
edition).
A less advanced text that
you may find useful for some parts of the course is the following:
Mishkin, F. The Economics of Money, Banking and
Financial Markets (8th edition). Addison Wesley, 2006.
LECTURE SLIDES
Slides for the lectures
to be given by Chris Bowdler will be available from the following links.
Lectures 1&2 (models of aggregate
price and output fluctuations). Supplementary
material.
Lectures 3&4 (the monetary
transmission mechanism). Supplementary
material.
Lectures 5&6 (discretionary monetary
policy and time inconsistency). Supplementary material.
Lectures 7&8 (the conduct of
monetary policy)
Lecture 9 (monetary policy and public
finance)
Lecture 10 (monetary policy and the yield
curve)
Lectures 11&12 (unconventional
monetary policy after the crisis)
An earlier lecture on
the credit crunch is here.
A short piece on QE and
the inflation outlook is here.
The lectures to be given
by James Forder will cover the following topics:
- The nature of money. The debate as to the
historical origins of 'money' and the question of which if any of the
traditional functions of money should be thought fundamental.
- The quantity theory. Considers the debate over
the measurement and importance of the quantity of money.
- Monetarism in practice. British policy from 1979
to 1992, including the rationales for the adoption of the various
targeting regimes of that period and the reasons for their abandonment;
and the adoption of inflation targets.
- Central bank independence. What's wrong with
central bank independence?
TUTORIAL TOPICS
A set of possible
tutorial topics corresponding to the Bowdler lectures is here and for the Forder
lectures here.
USEFUL ONLINE RESOURCES
A number of topics
covered in the course are relevant to current developments in financial markets
and policy responses to them. Economics blogs and news websites therefore
provide information and commentary that is worth consulting. Some useful links
are provided below:
Wall Street Journal: Real Time
Economics
Economics at
Prelims Courses Finals Courses Useful pages Dept
of Economics Lecture
lists
NOTE: When you are using a computer
that does not have a university IP address, you will need to have arranged
remote access to many of the pages linked to this page, details on how to do
this are provided here.
The prelims course comprises
10 weeks of microeconomics and 6 weeks of macroeconomics. The micro component
occupies more weeks than the macro component because most of the applications
of the Mathematics taught as part of the course involve micro topics. The
microeconomics classes and tutorials are given by Abi Adams and Andrew Farlow
and the macro classes and tutorials are given by Chris Bowdler
and Andrew
Farlow.
Prelims
course overview (inc. exam info, past papers, examiners' reports etc.)
Links
to pages on topical issues in Economics
The core courses (taken in
the second year) are Microeconomics (Michaelmas term), Macroeconomics (Hilary
term) and Quantitative Economics (Trinity term).
Micro
tutorials and lectures page
QE tutorials page
Overview
of Finals courses (inc. exam info, past papers, examiners' reports etc.)