BROCK UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 1P92
Principles of
Macroeconomics
Spring 2000
A.
General Information
|
Instructor Office Phone Office Hours Web Page |
Professor Zisimos Koustas TA 420 688-5550
Ext. 3326 W 17:00-18:00 or by appointment http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~zkoustas/ |
There will be one three-hour lecture on Wednesdays,
from 19:00-22:00 in TH325. It will be preceded by a tutorial scheduled for
18:00-19:00.
B.
Course Evaluation
The course
grade will be based on a midterm test, the final examination, and a term paper
carrying the following weights:
|
midterm test, Wednesday,
June 7, 19:00-20:30 final exam,
scheduled during exam period term paper,
due Wednesday, June 21 in the tutorials Total |
35% 45% 20% 100% |
C.
Course Outline
Required
Text: Macroeconomics: Canada In the Global Environment, Third Canadian
Edition, by Michael Parkin and Robin Bade.
Study Guide: Canada
In the Global Environment, Third Edition, by Harvey B. King and Avi J.
Cohen.
The required text provides a considerable amount of background information and discussion. Due to the intensive nature of the spring semester, it is strongly recommended that students attend class regularly and take class notes. Your class notes will highlight the most essential aspects of the course and help you study for the exams.
The
Study Guide accompanying the text can provide valuable practice for the
multiple-choice questions that will be part of your exams, as well as problems.
Attending the tutorials and preparing for the assigned text problems in
advance, is a must. The tutorial leaders will take up these problems in the
tutorials, and will give two short quizzes that will be closely related to your
tests. It is in your best interest to write these quizzes and have them
corrected and returned to you prior to the tests. You will find the experience
essential for your success in the course. Note that there will be no tutorials
during the first week of classes. The assigned text problems will be covered in
the tutorial of Week 2.
|
|
|
Assigned
Problems from Text |
|
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 |
Introduction
to Macroeconomics, Chs. 22, 23 Aggregate Demand
and Aggregate Supply, Ch. 24 Aggregate
Demand and the Multiplier, Ch.25 Fiscal
Policy, Ch. 26 Money
Banking and Interest Rates, Ch. 27 |
Ch. 23: 4,
5, 9, 10 2, 3, 4, 7,
8 1, 5, 6, 7 1, 2, 3, 5 6-10 |
|
Week 6 |
Midterm
test. Followed by: Monetary Policy Ch. 28 |
1, 2, 3, 7 |
|
Week 7 Week 8 Weeks 9, 10 |
Monetary
Policy (continued) Fiscal and
Monetary Policy Interactions, Ch. 29 The Balance
of Payments and The Dollar, Ch. 38 |
1, 2, 4, 5 1, 3, 5, 6 |
Economics 1P92 Term Paper Instructions - Winter 2000
General Outline
The term paper in this course is intended to give you some practice in looking up macroeconomic data, displaying it in proper form and analyzing changes over time. The assignment is as follows:
1. Look up GDP and your assigned component of GDP for the years 1988-1996 using E-STAT. You may copy the series by hand, or save the data to disk if you have access to a computer and software that will read Lotus spreadsheets or plain text data.
2. Show the data in a table, and plot the series on one or more charts. The charts may be plotted by hand or by computer.
3. Describe and analyze your assigned data series, using the following guidelines:
a) Define the data series you have been assigned.
b) Describe the changes that have taken place over time in your data series. Include discussions of both long-term trends and cyclical fluctuations.
c) Discuss possible reasons for fluctuations in your data series, and how these fluctuations are related to changes in GDP.
The data to be analyzed are from the National Income and Expenditure Accounts, and are contained in Matrices 8600 and 8601 in the CANSIM database.
The database is accessed using the E-STAT program, which is available in three ways:
- Computers in the Library provide direct access.
- A computer with a Brock address may access E-STAT via the Library’s web site.
- A computer with a non-Brock address may access E-STAT via the Statistics Canada web site (http://www.statcan.ca/start.html): go to “Education resources”. You will have to sign in; the “user” is dlibrocku, and the “password” is estat.
Each tutorial is assigned a different component of GDP, as
listed below. The term paper is due in your tutorial on Wednesday June 21. There is a penalty for late
papers - the grade (out of ten) will be reduced by one mark per day. Essays
must be submitted by hand -- they may not be e-mailed.
Length
Papers should contain two pages of text plus table(s), charts and bibliography. Papers must be typed, and the original copy must be submitted. (Always keep a copy for yourself.)
Grading
Grades are assigned for content and style. The content of the paper (6 percent) includes data, definitions, proper labeling of tables and charts and the quality of the analysis. The style component (4 percent) includes grammar, syntax, spelling and proper referencing of your sources.
References
The textbook contains much of the material necessary to analyze the data, and provides examples of proper style for the presentation of data. You are free, of course, to use additional sources. All sources used for both the data and the analysis must be shown in a bibliography in the following formats.
For a book: Tyler, S., Economics: My Heart’s Desire, Toronto (Jones Press), 1992
For an
article: McCartney, P., “Macro
Beats All”, Journal of Economics,
vol. 27 (Spring 1992), pp.
42 - 51.
For on-line data: Statistics Canada, Gross Domestic Product, CANSIM Matrix No. 12345, ESTAT.
It is much easier to reference your sources in parentheses in the text, rather than in footnotes. For example, (Tyler, p. 57) would refer to page 57 of the Tyler book in the bibligraphy.
Tutorial Topic Assignments (Note:
All dollar figures are to be in current dollars.)
Tutorial No. 1: Business gross fixed capital formation
Tutorial No. 2: Exports of goods and services