【ECN481】Money and Banking

Learning Objectives: As a result of successfully completing this course, students will have proficiency on the following course objectives.

• Knowledge of institutional facts regarding financial instruments, banking, and the Federal Reserve.
• Knowledge of measures of the money stock and conceptual issues involving how to define money in a society and use it in monetary policy.
• Mastery of present value analysis, with its variety of applications in the financial world.
• Applying economic concepts to determine what features make interest rates or returns on various bonds and stocks different and what factors make them move over time.
• Knowledge of the yield curve and how to interpret its shape based upon several competing hypotheses.
• Knowledge of the fundamental structure of the individual bank and key issues involving how banks make profits as well as their vulnerabilities.
• Knowledge of the regulatory structure of US banking.
• Knowledge of issues and experiences in US banking in the post-World War II period, including the Savings and Loan bailout and the credit crisis of 2008-09, along with key banking regulations.
• Knowledge of nonbank financial intermediaries, how they operate, and how they were affected by the financial crisis of 2008-09.
• Knowledge of the process of bank loaning, how it affects the money supply, and how the process in the banking system applies to the transmission of monetary policy.
• Knowledge of the structure and operation of the Federal Reserve, its balance sheet and monetary base determination, its policy tools, and issues involving all these aspects of the Federal Reserve.
• Knowledge of the conduct of monetary policy through the Fed’s interconnected strategy initiation policy tools, the federal funds rate and other operating targets, and the Fed’s choice of intermediate targets.
• Continuous application of these facts and concepts to help understand real world events in the financial world, banking, and monetary policy on a continual basis.

Opening Thoughts   

This online course consists of a three-credit, full-bodied course in Money and Banking.  The course has ECN 302 as a prerequisite (although I can waive that requirement), and students cannot take this course and FN 355 both for credit.  The material is extremely timely and highly applicable.  The course helps students understand fundamental institutional definitons and properties, concepts, and models in money, financial markets, banking and bank regulation, nonbank financial intermediaries, and the Federal Reserve.  This material can be readily applied to historical and current events concerning these topics so that students can understand them better with fundamental depth and sophistication.  The course should significantly add to students’ knowledge of how to analyze events with bonds and interest rates, the financial sector, banking and related insitutions, the Federal Reserve, and monetary policy.  It should also provide a solid basis for further study in any of these areas, as well as in related courses such as international finance.  

This course operates within the asynchronous format.  This platform provides advantages of online courses, while providing many benefits of on-campus classes.  The online medium enables students to take the class at literally any location that has internet capability.  Moreover, with the flexible schedule, students can complete the material on their own time, as long as they meet the deadlines in the syllabus.

At the same time, the format offers several benefits pertaining to on-campus classes.  First, I will personally grade all student work and give individualized comments, with graded work returned to students within 48 hours of the stated deadline for submission.  I am a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Syracuse University, and have taught this course for over 35 years.  I have also designed and have been teaching online Economics courses in the asynchronous format well-before the pandemic.  I will be available by email or Zoom call (by appointment, at a mutually agreed-upon time) throughout the course to answer any student questions or concerns.  Second, the course materials described on the last page of this syllabus include my actual class lectures (along with the power point slides) from having taught ECN 481/681 during the summer in an on-campus class setting (undergraduate and graduate students had entirely different exams).  So students should experience the benefits of having material explained more fully in actual on-campus class lectures.       

Please feel free to contact me whenever you have questions about the course material, assignments, exams, or logistics of the asynchronous online course.  Good luck and I hope you enjoy the class!

Course Requirements:

The course coverage is split into two equal parts.  The graded material for each part of the course consists of two homework assignments for students to complete and then a multiple choice exam on the material.    

There will be two non-cumulative exams, altogether counting one-half (50%) of the final grade.  The questions will be taken from material in the online lectures and Power Point slides.  They will be “open book” – you may use your book, notes, slides, taped lectures, etc.  Students will take them on Blackboard, to completed by the due date specified on this syllabus.  I will curve them if I feel it’s necessary, and will notify the class of any curve.  I have a sheet on Instructions for Taking the Multiple Choice Exams on Blackboard in the “Information” tab.

The remaining one-half (50%) of the final grade is based upon homework.  Homework consists of course material assignments that I will post.  Students are expected to turn them in any time by the due dates specified in this syllabus.  

There are four assignments on the course material, two for each part of the course.  Each includes a question that require students to work with actual data from well-known public websites from the Federal Reserve.  The assignments will be posted on Blackboard, under “Assignments”.  They are “open book” as well.

All homework assignments will be due on the deadline dates specified in this syllabus.  They in turn will be graded and returned by me within 48 hours of the due-date.  The overall homework grade will be determined as follows.  The grade will be A+ = 97.5% and above, A = 92.5% to 97.4%, A- = 90.0% to 92.4%, B+ = 87.5% to 89.9%, etc.