This course will explore various aspects of the macroeconomy, including long run growth, unemployment, inflation, exchange rates, and interest rates.
Williamson, Stephen, Macroeconomics, 2nd Canadian Edition. Pearson Education Canada, 2006.
Your course grade will be determined on the basis of assignments (20%), two midterms (20% each), and a final exam (40%).
Weekly problem sets will be available on the course website. Each week's assignment is due at the beginning of Thursday's class. Assignments are graded by your TA on a scale of zero to twenty. Assignments will be graded on the basis of whether a serious attempt has been made to answer the question, not on whether the answer given is correct. It is your responsibility to ensure that you know the correct answer to each question by the exam.
There are two midterm exams and a final exam. Exam questions will consist of problems and short-answer questions. The problems will be closely patterned after those in your assignments. For the short-answer questions I will provide a list of suggested questions from the textbook. The exam schedule is:
Lecture will be on Tuesday and Thursday from 5:30-7:20 PM in AQ 3005. Attendance at lecture is expected of all students, though I will not take attendance. I will occasionally cover material outside the textbook or make important announcements during lecture. If you miss lecture, you and you alone are responsible for obtaining the relevant information from a classmate.
Anything in the lecture or readings may appear in the exam unless I explicitly say otherwise. However, you should note that I cover in lecture what I think is interesting or important. If some subject is covered in detail in the readings but barely mentioned in lecture, it is a safe bet that it will receive limited attention in the exam.
Every student is assigned to a tutorial section. Attendance at tutorial is not mandatory, though tutorial is where assignments are handed back.
I will under certain limited circumstances regrade an exam or assignment. However:
If you miss one of the two midterms, I will "transfer the weight to the final", roughly speaking. The scheme for doing so is as follows. Suppose you miss the first midterm, and your final exam grade puts you in the 73rd percentile of the final exam grade distribution among those students that took the first midterm. Then I will assign you a grade for the first midterm equal to the 73rd percentile of the grade distribution on the first midterm. This way a student is not hurt if the exam he or she happens to miss turns out to be the easy one.
Note that I do not require a doctor's note, or even an explanation, for missing a midterm. You may choose to skip one of the midterms for entirely selfish or strategic reasons - maybe you don't feel like you are prepared, or maybe you have a ski trip planned. However, you should remember:
You may not miss the final exam. Missing both midterms, or missing the final, results in your receiving an "N" (equivalent to an "F") in the course.
Late assignments are handled as follows:
If you miss class due to illness or other emergency, and cannot turn in your assignment on time:
I realize that these rules are complicated. If you don't want to worry about them, just turn everything in on time!
You may if you wish attend a tutorial other than the one you are registered for. However:
Yes. Feel free to attend the scheduled office hours of any TA, or my scheduled office hours. If you wish to make an appointment outside of scheduled office hours, please make one with your official TA.
Yes. However, we ask that you please do not send complex and open-ended questions (for example, "How do I do problem five?"). These are better addressed in office hours. We also cannot promise an immediate response.
No.
No.