Macroeconomics. Advanced Level

Macroeconomics is a one-year required course designed for the first-year students of the ICEF Master of Science programme in financial economics. It provides an overview of modern macroeconomics at the advanced level. The course is taught in English. Macroeconomics course has three parts. Part I is taught by Professor Nikitin in modules 1 and 2. Its emphasis is on analytical tools of modern dynamic macroeconomics and on the long-run issues, such as the economic growth. Students will learn standard ‘workhorse’ models of modern macroeconomics, including the infinitely-lived representative agent framework and the overlapping-generations framework, as well as some of the standard applications to fiscal policy and social security. Students will be also familiarized with the main ideas of endogenous growth theory, ways to introduce money in dynamic optimizing macroeconomic models and some of the long-run findings from these models, including the optimum quantity of money (the Friedman rule). Part II of the course is taught by Professor Peiris in module 2 and gives an introduction to open economy issues. Part III of the course is taught by Professor Gebauer in modules 3 and 4. It deals with the analysis of the short-run macroeconomic phenomena. It introduces the Real Business Cycle approach and the New Keynesian approach to the problem of economic fluctuations. It also familiarizes students with models of Search and Matching in labor markets. Prerequisites: Students are expected to be familiar with microeconomics and macroeconomics at the intermediate level, calculus of several variables, basic statistics and econometrics.