Money and Banking - ECON0045

ECON0045 > undergraduate module > 2019/20.

UCL Module Catalogue: money-and-banking/ECON0045.

Aims

This module aims to enable students to apply both microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis to the assessment of current debates on financial and monetary issues.

Objectives

A basic understanding of:

• The principles of bank management and their changing character in recent decades;
• Strategies adopted by banks to address risk, with particularly reference to informational asymmetries;
• The economic theory of bank intermediation;
• The role of banking in the financial system and in the wider economy;
• Banking regulation and government intervention in the banking sector;
• Theories and debates on the role and effectiveness of monetary policy;
• Monetary aggregates, exchange rates and inflation as targets of monetary policy;
• The historical experience of UK monetary policy during the past three decades.

Suitable for

• 3rd Year Econ/Stats (LG13), Math/Econ (G1L1/G1LC), SEF (GLN0), SEL (GLR0) and other students who have studied STAT0001 (or equivalent).  

Not available to

• Economics (L100/L101/L102), Econ/Geog (LL17) or Phil/Econ (VL51) students. Year 3 L100/L101/L102/LL17/VL51 students should select ECON0038 instead.

Prerequisites

This Level 5 module requires students to have previously taken Introductory Economics module(s) at Level 4 (or above).

Assumed knowledge

Students are welcome to enrol in this module whatever their academic background, though it is assumed that they have at least some previous knowledge of economics, and that they are used to following current affairs in the economic and financial press. Their knowledge of economic theory needs to be very basic only, since the module makes no technical or mathematical demands on students, though they are encouraged to learn the use of diagrams. Since the module is directed at students of many different academic backgrounds, they are encouraged to make full use of whatever academic interest or background they bring to it, from economics to history, and from philosophy to geography. 

Teaching and assessment

• 20 hours of lectures plus 4 compulsory tutorial classes and 4 accompanying problem sets (including both essays and mathematical problems).
• Assessment is a 2-hour unseen written examination in Term 3 requiring both problem solving and essay-writing.