Course Catalog

Fall 2008

B8351-001: Financial Markets and the Economy

MW Full Term, 10:45AM to 12:15PM

Instructor: frederic mishkin

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This course uses a combination of lectures and class discussion to examine the critical role of financial markets and financial institutions in the macro economy. It draws on the wealth of current economic events to explore a range of issues, including the diversity of monetary policy frameworks in the world today and the reasons that some countries are able to control their own monetary policy while others are compelled to peg their currency or even adopt another country’s currency outright; the implications of the recent rapid innovation in both financial instruments and institutions — including the growth of hedge funds and credit derivatives — for both the efficiency and stability; the global financial system; the changes in emerging market financial systems that have occurred since the crises of the late 1990s and the areas where further progress is needed; the role of regulation and supervision in ensuring financial stability, and the efforts to coordinate supervisory standards around the world; and the role of such institutions as the IMF and the World Bank in global financial system. Throughout the course, the focus is on relating fundamental theories of monetary and financial economics to the reality of the rapidly changing global financial environment.

Frederic Mishkin

Frederic Mishkin

Alfred Lerner Professor of Banking and Financial Institutions

Frederic S. Mishkin is the Alfred Lerner Professor of Banking and Financial Institutions at the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and from September 2006 to August 2008 was a member (governor) of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the FDIC Center for Banking Research, and past President of the Eastern Economic Association. Since receiving his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976, he has taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Princeton University and Columbia. He has also received an honorary professorship from the Peoples (Renmin) University of China. From 1994 to 1997 he was Executive Vice President and Director of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and an associate economist of the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve System.

Professor Mishkin's research focuses on monetary policy and its impact on financial markets and the aggregate economy. He is the author of The Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 8th Edition (Addison Wesley Longman, 2007), the number one selling textbook in its field. In addition he is the author of more than fifteen other books, including Financial Markets and Institutions, 6th edition (Pearson, 2009), Monetary Policy Strategy (MIT Press, 2007), The Next Great Globalization: How Disadvantaged Nations Can Harness Their Financial Systems to Get Rich (Princeton University Press, 2006), Inflation Targeting: Lessons from the International Experience (Princeton University Press, 1999), Money, Interest Rates, and Inflation (Edward Elgar, 1993),A Rational Expectations Approach to Macroeconometrics:Testing Policy Ineffectiveness and Efficient Markets Models (University of Chicago Press, 1983), and has published over one hundred and fifty articles in professional journals and books.

Professor Mishkin has served on the editorial board of the American Economic Review,has been an associate editor at the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and was the editor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's, Economic Policy Review. He is currently an associate editor (member of the editorial board) at six academic journals, including the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics Abstracts, Journal of International Money and Finance, International Finance, Finance India, and Economic Policy Review. He has been a consultant to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as to numerous central banks throughout the world. He was also a member of the International Advisory Board to the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea and an advisor to the Institute for Monetary and Economic Research at the Bank of Korea.

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