NOTE: You can find all class materials at Blackboard. If not, drop me an email with your NetID.

Syllabus[pdf]

Instructor

• Jay H. Hong, Harkness 227
• Office Hours: Wednesday 2-3p and by appointment

Course Description

ECO 535 is the first sequence in 2nd year macro. The goal of this course is to learn the tools to write a good paper which are combinations of the followings: (1) theoretical tools (models), (2) relationship between model and data (calibration), (3) technique to solve the model (computation), most importantly (4) new idea with relevant economic questions. Therefore, we will learn a class of models which can be used, look at data seriously, learn how to solve the models with the computer, and try to come up with your own research agenda.

Here is my favorite saying from Víctor Ríos-Rull. "This is a Ph.D. course not a Masters course. As such students are not expected to learn what other people have discovered, but the tools that are needed in order to discover things by themselves. Because of this reason the active work of the students is crucial to achieve the objective of mastering the tools that are described above. This is a course to learn to do things, and, therefore, it requires to do some things."

You should expect to learn a lot from homeworks which will be assigned almost everyweeks. Generally speaking, homeworks will involve some degree of computer programming and will be designed to be relatively difficult. The main point of these homeworks is to make students get used to the tools and get ready to write a good research paper.

Prerequisites

• First year macro sequences (Eco 475 and 476) are prerequisites.
• Some prior knowledge in computer programming are recommended. If you don't have any, it is good time to start learning fortran. Students are also expected to learn the packages such as, Matlab, Stata.

Requirements and Grades

• Your grade will be determined by equally weighted homework assignments, several referee reports, (at least two)class presentations, a final exam, and a final research proposal. The due date of your proposal is 11:59pm (EST) on Dec 31, 2009.
• Every assignments should be typed up in TeX and converted in pdf and uploaded into Blackboard. This is the only way to submit your homework. No email, no hardcopy, please. The file name should read as "53509HW01-Lastname.pdf". Make sure to submit your own code (compressed in \53509HW1-Lastname.zip") when your assignment requires some programming.

Textbooks

• Kenneth Judd, Numerical Methods in Economics, MIT press (ISBN 0-262-10071-1)
• Ramon Marimon and Andrew Scott ed., Computational Methods for the Study of Dynamic Economies, Oxford Univ Press (ISBN 0-199-24827-3)
• Burkhard Heer and Alfred Maußner, Dynamic General Equilibrium Modelling: Computational Methods and Applications, Springer (ISBN 3-540-22095-4)
• William Press et al, Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN, Cambridge University Press, available online

Schedule

Problem Sets

• Check Blackboard page.

References

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