Suggested Topics

Reminder: you need to have a chosen topic by Friday April 9.

Here are some suggested topics:

How the crisis unfolded/impacted other countries:

• Iceland
• United Kingdom
• Eastern Europe: especially Latvia and Estonia
• Spain
• China
• Japan
  

Policy taken in the aftermath of the crisis:

Treasury/Federal Government Programs

• TARP: give us more detail and the subsequent results than we have seen in class so far
• HAMP: the program to prevent foreclosures
• The stimulus bill
• The bailout of the auto industry
• Cash for Clunkers
• First-time Home Purchases
  

US Federal Reserve Actions

• TAF: Term auction facility
• Commercial Paper actions
• TALF: Fed purchases of asset backed securites (non-mortgage)
  
• Mortgage Purchases

The FDIC and all of the bank closings

Actions taken in the UK.

Actions take in China.

The impact of the crisis on International Trade.

Some possible causes that we did not cover in class:

• China and Savings Glut
• Did the Fed keep rates too low for too long in 2002-2005
• Regulation of Derivatives market (there is a good Frontline episode on this)
  

Earlier Crises:

• Great Depression
• Japan 1990s
• Asian Crisis late 1990s
  
• Scandinavian Bank Crisis 1989-1991
• 1907 Banking Panic
• Savings and Loan Crisis
• Latin American Crises (there are a lot, see "This time..."

Proposals being put forth now to change regulation:

• Plans from the UK
• Current proposals from Senator Dodd
• Volcker proposals
  

There are some ideas, of course you can also suggest something yourself.

Final Project Guidelines

For the final project I expect you to write an 8-10 page paper and give an 18 minute in class presentation about a topic relevant to the class. The project should include some empirical results, namely some numbers and hopefully a graph or two about relevant data for your topic.

The timeline for the project is as follows:

• Monday April 5: in class lottery to determine the date for each presentations, see the schedule below. We will also determine whether the first evening gathering will be Monday April 19, Monday April 26 or Tuesday April 27. For details see below.
• Monday April 19: rough draft due
• Monday April 19-April 28: presentations
• Wednesday May 5: final draft due

Presentation schedule:

There will be four presentations per class. We are having two evening classes to cover all of the presentations. The second class will be on Wednesday at 7:30 pm, location tba (maybe Irish Lion). The first class will either be Monday April 19, Monday April 26 or Tuesday April 27. We will determine the time based upon an inclass vote on Monday April 5th.

Lottery:

We will have a lottery on Monday April 5th to determine who presents when. We will do this by everyone drawing a card form a standard 52 card deck. The priority of who chooses first will by number, Ace high, and then by suit: Diamond>Heart>Spade>Club. If you do not make class on Monday April 5, you will be forced to choose from what was left over.

Class Attendance:

Attending class is mandatory during the presentations. I will be taking attendance and this will be 5% of the 20% class attendance grade. In order to avoid a penalty for not attending you will have to clear it with me before Monday April 19th.

Tentative Schedule for Rest of the Semester

Reminder: No Class this week!

Week of April 5:

• Monday April 5: discussing "This Time is Different", lottery to determine presentation dates
  
• Wednesday April 7: discussing "This Time is Different"
• Friday April 9: please have topic picked out by 5pm, for more details see the post on the final project

Week of April 12:

• Monday April 12: discussing "Animal Spirits"
  
• Wednesday April 14: discussing "Animal Spirits

Week of April 19: Presentation Starts

• Monday April 19: rough draft due, presentations #1 to #4.
• Monday April 19, 7:30pm, tentative date for first evening session, presentations #5 to #8.
• Wednesday April 21: presentations #9 to #12.

Week of April 26: Presentations

• Monday April 26: presentations #13 to #16.
• Either Monday April 26, 7:30pm or Tuesday April 27, 7:30pm alternative date for presentations #5 to #8.
• Wednesday April 28: presentations #16 to #20.
• Wednesday April 28, 7:30 pm. presentations #21 to 24.

Finals Week

• Final Project due via pdf email by 5pm on Wednesday May 5.

note: the location for the evening presentation is still to be determined.

Excellent Discussion on Macro

Here is an excellent post by James Hamilton, an economist at California-San Diego.

"Modeling problems in credit markets"

Book Readings

Here is a preliminary breakdown of the required readings for the three books:

(note that it is unrealistic for us to cover all of the topics in all three books, so we will be focusing on sections of each book. That said the material we skip is still worth reading)

Irrational Exuberance: start covering on Monday March 23rd.

Please read:

• Both Prefaces: read all
  
• Chapter One: read all
  
• Chapter Two: read all
  
• Chapter Three: only read pp. 31-36 (up to Cultural...), pp. 50-52 (The Decline of ...) and p. 55 (Summing Up)
• Chapter Four: read all
  
• Chapter Five: skip (although it is an interesting read)
• Chapter Six: read all
• Chapter Seven: skip
• Chapter Eight: only read pp. 147-149 (up to Moral Anchors..) and pp. 152-155 (Overconfidence...)
  
• Chapter Nine: only read pp. 172-173 (The Story so Far)
• Chapter Ten: read all
• Chapter Eleven: skip
• Chapter Twelve: only read pp. 207-210 (up to Ethics..), pp. 224-225 (Monetary Policy...) and pp. 229-230 (Conclusion..)

This Time is Different: start covering March 30

(we will basically be skipping most of the material due to Sovereign Default, and instead focus on Financial Crises)

Please Read:

• Preface, Preamble, Part I (only page 1) and Chapter One: read all
• Chapter 2: skip
• Chapter 3: skip (note this chapter defines most of the data used, you can read this if you do not understand the data cited in later chapters)
• Part II and Part III: chapters 4 through 9: skip all
• Part IV: chapters 10 through 12: read all
• Part V: read chapters 13 through 15, skip chapter 16
• Part VI: read chapter 17.

Animal Spirits start covering on April 5.

• We will try to read it all, we may skip chapters 8, 9 and 13.
  

Study Guide

Study Guide can be found here.

update: study guide updated on Sunday March 7 at 11:45 am. It now reflects all of the material we covered.

State of Macroeconomics

For a brief history of Macroeconomics, read Mankiw:

• "The Macroeconomist as a Scientist and Engineer"

For criticism of the `DSGE' model see Willem Buiter:

• "The unfortunate uselessness of most `state of the art' academic monetary economics"