Classes

• This unit provides 3 hours face-to-face teaching per week consisting of 1 x 2 hour lecture and 1 x 1 hour tutorial
• The timetable for lectures and tutorials can be found on the University web site at: http://www.timetables.mq.edu.au/ Consult this website for times and locations of tutorials.

Required and Recommended Texts and/or Materials

As an applied unit, we will be looking at specific models as they are used in practice, in real world policy making, rather than drawing upon a theoretical text. Access to the textbook for ECON204:

Olivier Blanchard & Jeffrey Sheen, Macroeconomics, Pearson (either the 3rd Australasian edition, 2009, or the 4th Edition 2013)

would be useful but is not essential, as all the models discussed in the Unit will be presented in full in the lectures. Other readings will be supplied online or by the lecturer.

Often when we want you to read a certain article, you will need to find it through the Library. A particularly valuable source for this Unit is the Econlit database, available from the Library online. Go to the Library homepage from the Macquarie University website (it is best to do this from an on-campus computer, to ensure access) and you’ll see the following:

MultiSearch

Books, articles and...(more)    Databases     Unit readings    Past exam papers

Click the second option “Databases” and enter the name Econlit. This will lead you to the Econlit hyperlink; click on it and you will enter the Econlit search page. You can commence a search using the three search boxes in the top left corner (you can add additional rows as necessary). As an example, enter the words “Keynes”, “Britain” and “Depression” (one word in each row; no need at this stage to specify the field).  It is likely that at the top of the list you will find:

Esslinger, H.U. (1996) “More of Keynes and Less of Milton Friedman: Sir Hans Singer’s Contributions to Economics”, Review of Political Economy, October, Issue 4, Volume 8, pp. 367-78.

This is a typical, refereed academic journal article, of the type upon which you will rely when studying this unit and others like it.

Note that below the title you might find a hyperlink to a pdf file of the full text of the article.  If you find the article listed in Econlit, but without the link to the pdf file, then make note of the Date, Volume, and Issue of the article you want, in this case October 1996, Volume 8, Issue 4, pp. 367-78.  Then go back to the Library homepage and enter some key words into the Books, Articles and... link (for example try Esslinger Review of Political Economy).  You should find the same article by this route, using more exact details such as Volume and Issue if necessary.

Technology Used and Required

• Much of the unit’s material will be available at its ilearn website.
• Access to Powerpoint software would also be an advantage.

Unit Web Page

Lecture and tutorial material as well as up to date information concerning any aspect of the unit, including any changes to the schedule, will be available to students by logging on to iLearn at http://learn.mq.edu.au.

What follows is a guide to the topics covered, and the order in which they will be covered.  However we will leave ourselves free to spend more or less time on particular topics if it seems warranted..

You will have seen in the notes on the Assignment above, that when you need to submit assignments, make applications and requests and generally interact with staff, we will ask you to do this in a certain way.  For example, when we seek information from you, or when you make requests or seek advice on specific issues, we will ask you to use specific email headings as a pre-requisite of your request.  Similarly, Assignments will be submitted by email, and when you submit you will be required to use a specific email heading, and a specific structure for the filename of your Assignment.  This allows us to easily search for the Assignment – but it is also good practice for the standards of efficiency and behaviour that will be expected of you in your future employment.  Some leeway will be given in the Unit for human error (though you may find that very little leeway is given for such errors in the corporate world).  However a failure to do the right thing wastes the time of staff and diverts them from helping your fellow students, and even more, bodes ill for your ability to work in the public or private sectors where minimum standards of care and behaviour  are taken for granted.  Serious or repeated failures to do the right thing will inevitably risk the loss of marks, depending on the seriousness of the infraction and the number of reoccurrences.