The purpose of this course is to put you in a position to read and critically analyze journal articles in macroeconomics. The first half of the course will focus on basic tools and technique, the second half will survey applications of these tools to some of the main questions in macro.
The required textbook is David Romer's Advanced Macroeconomics.
If it shows up in the bookstore on time, Lars Ljungqvist and Tom Sargent's Recursive Macroeconomic Theory will also be used.
Evaluation will consist of a referee report (10%), weekly problem sets (10%), and two exams (40% each).
Problem sets are usually made available on Tuesday and are due at the beginning of class the following Tuesday. I grade them on a scale of 0 to 10. Grades on problem sets are subjective, meaning I will simply assign a number that reflects my opinion of your performance on the assignment. As a result, the quality of presentation will count, and homework grades are not open to appeal.
Feel free to form study groups and work with other students on the problem sets. However, you may not directly copy an answer from a colleague's work or from an answer key. The purpose of the homework is to give you practice for the exams. That's why they don't count for much (they count for even less when you consider that most students will get about an 8 or 9). The only reason I even grade them is to make sure you do them.
I recycle problems from year to year; this may make it tempting to help yourself out by tracking down a previous answer key. DO NOT DO THIS. Not only is it academic dishonesty, but it is a waste of everyone's time. If you don't learn how to do the problems in the problem sets, you will fail the exams, and thus fail the class.
In addition to the graded material, I will also expect you to prepare for the exams by doing selected problems at the end of each chapter in the textbook.
The midterm exam will be on Tuesday October 19, in class.
The final exam will be at some mutually convenient time during finals week.
Additional information is available at the class web site, http://www.sfu.ca/~bkrauth/econ808/welcome.htm.