Course 2023-2024 a.y.

• What is money and what are its main functions?
• What are the tools available to central banks to conduct monetary policy? How is monetary policy conducted at the Fed and the ECB?
• What is the role of banks in the creation of money?
• How is monetary policy transmitted to the real side of the economy? What are the effects on inflation, unemployment and output?
• What are the features of financial and labor markets that make them special, and how these interact with monetary policy and the rest of the economy?
• How should central banks conduct monetary policy?
• How has monetary policy in the US and in the Euro Area responded to the emergence of the liquidity trap and the financial crisis, as well as the Covid recession? How do quantitative easing, credit easing and other conventional monetary policies work?

• Define money and its primary functions.
• Illustrate the money supply process and the role of banks in the creation of money.
• Describe the monetary policy tools and institutions at different central banks, such as the Fed and the ECB.
• Develop empirical evidence and simple theoretical models of the transmission mechanisms of monetary policy to the real side of the economy.
• Illustrate a model of optimal monetary policy with inflation targeting and identify the trade-offs faced by central banks in stabilizing inflation and output.
• Describe the unconventional monetary policies implemented since the financial crisis in the euro area and the US, as well as during the Covid recession.

• Chose and apply the appropriate model to assess the effects of conventional and unconventional monetary policies on the economy.
• Choose and apply the appropriate model to assess the trade-offs faced by central banks when setting monetary policy.
• Justify the choices of institutional settings and monetary policy tools in different countries and at different central banks.
• Interpret the monetary policy decisions on key interest rates and other non-standard measures taken by the Federal Open Market Committee at the Fed and the Governing Council at ECB during their regular meetings.
• Formulate a desirable monetary policy action based on the assessment of the inflation outlook and the economic developments on the real side (unemployment, consumption, investment...).
• Interact in a constructive way and think critically.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Online lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Exercises (exercises, database, software etc.)
• Individual assignments
• Group assignments

• The learning experience of this course includes, in addition to face-to-face and online lectures, the solution in class of the Problem Sets assigned to students throughout the course.
• Those exercises allow students to apply the analytical tools and models illustrated during the course and to familiarize with downloading and elaborating key macroeconomics data (on alternative measures of inflation; wages; indicators of labor market activity such as unemployment, vacancies posted, labor force participation; output; consumption; investment...).
• Students are encouraged to work on the assignments in groups, though they are asked to submit individually. Guest speaker’s talks from policymakers at central banks may be organized. 

There are two evaluation formats for the course. A format for students regularly attending lectures and a non-attending students’ format. The first format is the preferred evaluation procedure as it is designed to foster gradual and effective learning and to ensure a wide-ranging final evaluation.

The attending students format consists of four take-home assignments and a final examination, possibly held online. Take-home assignments are worth 60% of the final grade, and the final exam is worth the remaining 40%.

Take-home assignments are taken at specific dates during classroom time, while the final exam can be taken at any of the exam sessions offered within the academic year. To take the exam as an attending student, you are required to score above pass grade (18/30) in at least three take-home assignments.

Students who have submitted the take-home assignments, can choose to move to the non-attending students’ format at a second stage, in which case the assignments will not contribute to the final grade. Students can sit the attending-student exam multiple times within the academic year of enrollment. Past that, only the non-attending format will be offered.

Take-home Assignments

There are 4 take-home assignments throughout the course. These are open books, and students will have 2-3 days to solve and submit their solutions. While students are encouraged to work in groups, each student must hand-in his/her own copy of the solution, clearly indicating those students he/she has worked with. The final elaboration and writing of the assignment must be individual and submitted solutions cannot be identical.

Each assignment consists of two parts. In the first part, students will be asked to solve an exercise that is a variation on the material covered in class. In the second part, they will work with real data. Students will be asked to plot relevant empirical relationships - hence no econometrics is needed - and interpret their findings considering what they saw in class.

Out of the 4 assignments, only the 3 best contribute to the final grade, i.e., the assignment with the lowest grade will be automatically disregarded. Thus, each assignment is worth 20% of the final grade. Finally, while it is not compulsory to submit all the assignments, a student submitting all of them will be awarded 1 extra point on the final grade from the assignments if the four of them score above pass grade.

Final Examination

The final exam is monitored and taken on the PC (if online it is held on Blackboard on Respondus). Students have 1 hour to answer 4 out of 5 short questions. We value short, clear-cut and precise answers. Within the attending students’ format, the final exam only consists of theoretical essay questions.

To pass the exam, the grade of the final exam as well as the grade of the three best take-home assignments must be higher than pass. If the final exam grade is below pass you will not pass the exam even if the average between the final exam and the take-home assignments is above pass.

The non-attending students format consists of a final exam (possibly online) with two parts. 

In the first part, students must answer 4 out of 5 short questions. We value short, clear-cut and precise answers. This first part covers the theoretical content of the lectures and lasts 1 hour. In the second part, students are asked to solve an exercise that is a variation on the material covered in class. Part 2 lasts 45'. 

Part 1 and 2 are taken during the same exam session. If the exam is held in presence, both Part 1 and Part 2 are monitored. Part 1 is taken on the PC. If the exam is held online, Part 1 is held on Blackboard using the Respondus browser. Part 2 is instead taken outside the Respondus browser. After completing the first part, students exit Respondus, download the text of the exercise, solve it with pen and paper and upload it on Blackboard (some extra time is allowed in this case for completing the procedure).

The course material, for both attending and non-attending students, consists on a combination of:

• Few selected chapters from F. MISHKIN, K. MATTHEWS, M. GIULIODORI, The Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, European Edition, Pearson, 2013.
• Several additional readings. Lecture slides, problem sets and additional readings are uploaded in the Bboard platform of the course.