INTERMEDIATE MACROECONOMICS 2 - 2022/3

Module Overview

Macroeconomic policy and performance are fundamental to our daily lives. This course gives the students a systematic way of thinking about macroeconomic issues. The students will be able to derive macroeconomic models based on the behaviour of economics agents. The students will end up with a model that they could can use independently to understand macroeconomic behaviour and policy issues in the real world.

Module provider

Economics

Module Leader

PRACA CAVACO NUNES Ricardo (Economics)

Number of Credits: 15

ECTS Credits: 7.5

Framework: FHEQ Level 5

Module cap (Maximum number of students): N/A

Module Availability

Semester 2

Prerequisites / Co-requisites

None

Module content

Indicative content includes:

Micro-foundations of economic decisions and optimising behavior, monetary policy, market Imperfections, the Phillips curve, stabilisation policy, expectations formation

Assessment pattern

Alternative Assessment

Not applicable

Assessment Strategy

The assessment strategy is designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate:

• their skills in inter-temporal optimization and construction and development of the New-Keynesian micro-founded 3-equations macroeconomic model of the business cycle,


• their skills in problem solving and derivation of the key equations of the model making use of inter-temporal optimization,


• their skills in economic knowledge and graphical interpretation,


• their knowledge of the model and also their ability to analyse economic phenomena through the lens of modern macroeconomic models.

Thus, the summative assessment for this module consists of:

• A midterm class test worth 30% of the final score in this module


• A final exam worth 70% of the final score in this module

 

Formative assessment and feedback

Students will receive verbal feedback during lectures every week, as well as during the problem-solving tutorials. The solutions to the problem sets are posted online after the tutorials have taken place and this allows students to check their progress on a weekly basis.

Module aims

• To provide students with an economic model necessary for the study of macroeconomic problems.
• To demonstrate how to aggregate microeconomic behaviour of economic agents to analyse macroeconomic performance. Particular reference is made to the micro-foundations of macro models and to the role that market imperfections play in labour and product markets and to the role of institutions in designing macroeconomic policies.
• To enable students to derive and solve macroeconomic models using different scenarios of central banking policy and private agents expectations.
• To allow students to better describe economic models in terms of mathematical analysis, economic intuition, and graphical analysis.

Learning outcomes

Methods of Teaching / Learning

The learning and teaching strategy is designed to:

• Enhance students’ understanding of the economics of macroeconomic policy questions


• Enhance students’ skills in applying analytic tools to macroeconomic policy questions, in presenting their findings in verbal and written format.

Students receive weekly problem sets and attempt solving them before seeing the solutions. The students can then see the solutions during the tutorials and can check their progress on a weekly basis. The module also has several activities. In one such activity, students forecast the interest rate that the Bank of England sets as well as key macroeconomic variables. Another activity aims at explaining the concepts learnt in class, while using different points of view.

The learning and teaching methods include:

• 2 hours of lectures x 11 weeks


• 1 hour of tutorial x 6 weeks 

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk
Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: ECO2046

Other information

The School of Economics is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This module is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

Employability. This module provides students with analytical skills and the ability to derive and understand macroeconomic models that are heavily used by central banks, governments, finance industry, and many economic sectors that need to understand and forecast the evolution of the economy.

Resourcefulness and resilience. Students in this module will gather resources from central banks and government agencies to show their understanding of the material.

Global and cultural capabilities. Real life examples from different countries will be utilized in this module, which will build students global capabilities.

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2022/3 academic year.