Issues in Finance and Banking
Module overview
TB1 - Issues in Finance and Banking
The objective of this part of the module is to provide first year students in the BSc Economics, Finance and Banking with an early exposure to a selected number of topics of particular relevance to their course:
- Money - currency, money, legal tender, monetary aggregates
- Banks - banks as companies, regulated activities, deposit taking, lending, balance sheet, asset transformation
- Financial markets and products - loans, bonds, shares, commodities, financial markets, payment systems
- Monetary systems - central banks, monetary policy, base rate, money supply
- Inflation - definition, calculation, indices
- Data - selection of sources and presentation of data and information
- Presentations - general guidelines on how to prepare a short presentation: slideware, structure, style
TB2 - Developments in economic toughts
The objective of this part fo the module is to provide first year students in the courses in economics with an appreciation of the development of a few, selected economic theories.
- Classical economics
- Neo-classical economics
- Behavioural economics
- Business cycles
- J M Keynes
- Monetarism
- Austrians
- Real business cycles
- Development economics
- Investments - Sachs
- Markets - Easterly
- Randomised control trials - Duflo
- Institutions - Acemoglu & Robinson
Teaching and planned activities
The module is delivered via a combination of video lectures and workshops.
- Video lectures concentrate on introducing concepts, theories, information and practices.
- Workshops are structured to develop an understanding of the material introduced in the lectures, to offer opportunities for formative assessment in practicing techniques introduced in the lectures and to critically review contemporary issues
Assessment
- Coursework 1 - 50%
- One 1,000-word essay
- One 5’ individual presentation
- Coursework 2 - 50%
- One 2,000-word essay
Reading list
There are no reference textbooks for this module. In TB1 we will use official sources of information (Bank of England, Office for national statistics, OECD, FRED, World Bank, IMF, banks’ websites). In TB2 we will use extracts of selected books and articles.