Econ 419: Advanced Macroeconomics II

Welcome to this web page! This class is co-taught by Olivier Morand and Christian Zimmermann. This class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30-1:45 in room 200, Whetten Building. Morand will teach the first third of the class, Zimmermann the latter two thirds.

Office hours for this class are TBA (Morand) and Wednesdays 8-12 AM or by appointment (Christian Zimmermann).

Textbooks

This class will use the following textbook: Lars Ljungvist and Thomas J. Sargent, Recursive Macroeconomic Theory, MIT Press 2000. A second edition was published in 2004, you can use either for this class. It will also be used for Econ 429. It should be available at the UConn Bookstore (Co-op). Also, if you have David Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics, McGrawHill 1996 (or second edition, 2001, third edition, 2005), keep it. We will also cover a few chapters in Thomas F. Cooley (ed.), Frontiers of Business Cycle Research, Princeton University Press, 1997, which you may want to buy if you intend to specialize in macro.

We will not cover every chapter of the textbooks, and we will cover some material not covered in the textbook.

Topics

  1. Growth theory

    Romer, Chapters 1 and 3 (loosely)

  2. Recursive equilibria

    Ljungqvist and Sargent, Chapters 7, 8, 12.

  3. Real business cycles

    Cooley, Chapters 1, 2.

  4. Asset Pricing

    Ljungqvist and Sargent, Chapter 13.

Grades...

There will be two mid-terms and a final exam. Each will last a full class. We will also sprinkle a certain number of homeworks here and there, both to entice you to work without delay and to allow us to check we are on the right track. The formula will be:

To contact me: Phone: 6-3272, Email: christian.zimmermann@uconn.edu