Aims

The main objectives of this workshop are to teach students:
" To develop coherent economic argument;
" Reading and summary skills;
" To development arguments and written skills;
" To present an argument;
" To work in a group.

Main themes

The workshop will be devoted to the interactions between the financial markets and monetary policy. An interesting manner of studying these problems is to examine: (1) how a central bank like the ECB or the American federal Reserve determines the direction of its monetary policy and (2) how monetary policy influences economic activity. Accordingly, a range of issues are tackled, including: what are the variables (real, financial) which influence the direction of monetary policy, should a central bank react to extreme movements in share values or property prices, how can the direction (restrictive, expansionist) of monetary policy be evaluated at a given point in time, through which financial channels does monetary policy influence economic activity, do these channels have the same importance in different countries and has their importance increased over time, etc.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Evaluation: Students are evaluated on the basis of the quality of their contributions in the discussions and on the basis of their written report. Insofar as work is completed in groups, an individual evaluation is also needed. It can take the form of an individual questionnaire on the topic based on material obtained from work done by all the groups.