Econ 6212: Advanced Macroeconomics III

Welcome to this web page! This class is taught by Christian Zimmermann. This class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00-12:15 AM in room 311, Monteith Building.

Office hours for this class are Wednesdays 7:30-12:00 AM or by appointment.

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. The book should be available at the UConn Bookstore (Co-op).

We will not cover every chapter of the textbook, and we will cover some material not covered in the textbook (yet). Cooley is "Frontiers of Business Cycle Research", published in 1995 by Princeton University Press.

Topics

  1. Recursive equilibria

    Ljungqvist and Sargent, Chapter 7.

  2. Bellman exercices

    Exerices to be distributed.

  3. Arrow-Debreu

    Loosely from Mas-Colell-Whinston-Green, Chapter 19.

  4. Real business cycles

    Notes, Cooley, Chapters 1, 2, 11.

  5. Search Theory

    Ljungqvist and Sargent, Chapters 6, 26

  6. Self-Insurance

    Ljungqvist and Sargent, Chapter 16.

  7. Incomplete Markets

    Ljungqvist and Sargent, Chapter 17.

  8. Topics on Recursive Contracts

    Ljungqvist and Sargent, Part V.

Here is a reading list covering the main papers in each chapter of the book.

Grades...

There will be one mid-term 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. You will also be asked to write a short essay on a rather narrow topic from Ljungqvist and Sargent. The formula will be:

Essay Topics

The essay should be 8 pages long, plus a bibliography of at least 10 items. At least three must be articles (no more than two from the same journal), at least three must be unpublished working papers. Topics will be assigned and can be exchanged among students to lead to a Pareto improvement.

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