Economics 235: International Macroeconomics Ruanjai SUWANTARADON

Singapore Management University 2014-2015 Term 1

COURSE CODE & COURSE TITLE: Econ 235 International Macroeconomics
Instructor Name: Visiting Assistant Professor Ruanjai SUWANTARADON
Email: ruanjais@smu.edu.sg
Tel: 68280856
Office: School of Economics, #05-053
Office Hours: TBA
Office hours: Thursday, 13:00-15:00
Course description
This course will cover concepts and tools needed to understand the functioning of the global economy
and international financial markets. Using theoretical economic models, we will examine the
determinants of the balance of payments, current account deficits, international capital movements,
real and nominal exchange rates. We also use these models to discuss relevant current issues such
as global imbalances, sustainability of the U.S. current account deficits, currency crises, common
currency areas, sovereign debt and defaults, and international economic policy coordination.

Economics major students who do this course must do International Trade as well to replace Econ203
International Economics B.

Learning Objecti ves
This course aims to equip students with the basic knowledge and skills to analyze international
macroeconomic and finance issues and is taught at a more rigorous level than the corresponding
international finance section of Econ203 International Economics B.

Prerequisites
Intermediate Microeconomics AND Intermediate Macroeconomics;

Mutually Exclusive: EITHER Intl Economics A/B OR (Intl Trade AND/OR Intl Macroeconomics)

Assessment & Evaluation
Class participation 20% (see Appendix A)
Term project 20% (see Appendix B)
Mid-term examination 20%
Final examination 40%
Total 100%

Class Timings
Class sessions are of 3-hour duration per week. Each session will typically involve lecture, class
discussion and any scheduled project presentation. Discussions are the key to a good learning
experience and for that reason a high level of student participation is expected in each class (see
Class Participation below).

Schedule
G1 Wednesday 1200-1515

Teaching Assistants
TBA


School of Economics

Academic Year 2014-15
Term 1
Economics 235: International Macroeconomics Ruanjai SUWANTARADON
Singapore Management University 2014-2015 Term 1



Academic Integrity
All acts of academic dishonesty (including, but not limited to, plagiarism, cheating, fabrication,
facilitation of acts of academic dishonesty by others, unauthorized possession of exam questions, or
tampering with the academic work of other students) are serious offences.

All work presented in class must be the students own work. Any student caught violating this policy
may result in the student receiving zero marks for the component assessment or a fail grade for the
course. This policy applies to all works (whether oral or written) submitted for purposes of assessment.

Where in doubt, students are encouraged to consult the instructors of the course. Details on the SMU
Code of Academic Integrity may be accessed at http://www.smuscd.org/resources.html.

Homework (not graded)
Regular assignments will be posted to help you review the concepts taught in class and prepare for
the midterm and final examinations. Students are strongly encouraged to keep up with these
assignments; although they are not graded, your performance on the examinations is likely to improve
if you work consistently on the assignments.

Midterm and Final Examinations
Midterm exam will be in class in Week 7. Final exam date will be announced by the Registrar Office.
The final examination will cover all the material taught in the term. Please note that no makeup
examination will be provided. Their format will be announced to the class closer to the exam dates.

General Expectations
It is students responsibility to keep me apprised in the event that they are unable to fulfill any of the
course requirements. This should be done in a timely fashion, i.e. at least one week in advance. Take
note that in fairness to the rest of your classmates, no alternative arrangements will in general be
made to the components used to evaluate your course grade.

Recommended Texts

The materials will draw on various sources. General textbook references for the course are:

(1) Caves, Richard, J effrey Frankel, and Ronald J ones. 2007. World Trade and Payments: An
Introduction, 10
th
ed. Pearson.

(2) Masson, Paul. 2007. Lectures in International Finance: Crisis, Coordination, Currency Unions,
and Debt, World Scientific.

(3) Obstfeld, Maurice and Kenneth Rogoff. 1996. Foundations of International Macroeconomics. The
MIT Press

(4) Van den Berg, Hendrik. 2010. International Finance and Open-Economy Macroeconomics:
Theory, History, and Policy, World Scientific.

(5) Montiel, Peter. 2009. International Macroeconomics, Wiley-Blackwell.

(6) Husted, Steven and Michael Melvin. 2009. International Economics, 8
th
ed. Pearson.

(7) Krugman, Paul, Maurice Obstfeld, and Marc J . Melitz 2011. International Economics: Theory and
Practice, 9
th
ed. Pearson.

(8) Appleyard, Dennis, Alfred Field, J r., Steven Cobb. 2010. International Economics, 7
th
ed.
McGraw-Hill.

(9) Salvatore, Dominick. 2010. International Economics: Trade and Finance, 10
th
ed. Wiley.

(10) Pugel, Thomas. 2004. International Economics, 12
th
ed. McGraw-Hill.

Economics 235: International Macroeconomics Ruanjai SUWANTARADON
Singapore Management University 2014-2015 Term 1



Tentati ve Lesson Plan

Week 1 Introduction and Balance of Payments Accounting

Week 2 Exchange Rates and Foreign Exchange Markets

Week 3 Model of Balance of Payments and Exchange Rate Determination: Elasticity
Approach

Week 4 Keynesian Approach to the Balance of Payments & Mundell-Fleming Model

Week 5 Monetary Approach

Week 6 Exchange Rate Regimes

Week 7 Midterm Examination (in class) & Currency Crisis Models
Week 8 Recess Week
Week 9 Intertemporal Approach to the Theory of Current Account Determination

Week 10 Savings, Investment and Current Account Dynamics

Week 11 Fiscal Deficits and Current Account Dynamics
Project Presentations

Week 12 Macroeconomics of External Debt and Defaults
Project Presentations

Week 13 International Macroeconomic Policy Coordination
Project Presentations

Week 14 Revision Week

Week 15 or 16 Final Examination (TBA)












Economics 235: International Macroeconomics Ruanjai SUWANTARADON
Singapore Management University 2014-2015 Term 1



Appendix A: Class Participation (20%)

Student participation is taken seriously. Your attendance will be recorded for each class, and late
comers will be noted. It must be emphasized that class participation is not just class attendance.
Students are expected to read the relevant material before coming to class, and to come prepared
with questions and participate in discussions. Those who repeatedly do not speak up can expect cold
calls. On the other hand, the quality of ones comments will ultimately matter more than quantity.
Students who make constructive comments that demonstrate a critical understanding of the material
(for example, relating it to current events and phenomenon) will in general receive strong class
participation marks.

Each students participation in each class session will be evaluated on a scale from 0 to 5:
0 unexcused absence
1 excused absence
2 less than adequate participation
3 acceptable participation
4~5 excellent contribution(s)

The evaluation will be based on the following criteria:

a. Content mastery. Participation quizzes will be used to evaluate how attentively you followed and
understood the course material covered in the current lecture. This is a minimum expectation for
acceptable participation.

For each in-class quiz, you will first attempt the question on your own. Thereafter, you may
discuss your answer with any classmate for confirmation or consultation. Finally, you will write
down your final answer, before submitting the quiz in. Only your final answer will be graded.
Participation quiz questions will also illustrate the types of questions that you might expect on the
mid-term and final exams.

b. Contribution to the class process. Students are encouraged to speak up in class, but comments
should always be constructive. These should demonstrate attentiveness to the lecture, or
alternatively attempt to build upon the ideas of others by responding to or providing thoughtful
criticism. You should not feel shy to ask relevant questions, particularly if clarification on class
material is needed. Students who speak up regularly will generally receive an acceptable, if not
an excellent rating for class participation.

c. Quality of argument. While frequent class participation is important, quality will ultimately matter
more than quantity. The best student contributions will ideally demonstrate use of logical
consistency, aptness to the issues under discussion, and make useful connections to prior course
material. If well done, this would warrant an excellent class participation rating.

Class participation will be deemed less than adequate if a student is clearly not attentive to what is
going on in class, gives only one or two word answers to questions without at least a little elaboration,
makes remarks that are totally irrelevant, or shows insensitivity to others.

Economics 235: International Macroeconomics Ruanjai SUWANTARADON
Singapore Management University 2014-2015 Term 1



Appendix B: Term Project (20%)

The term project will consist of a written report (10%) and a group presentation (10%).

1. Report (10%)

You are to work in a group of 4-5 students and write an academic literature review on a research topic
related to international macroeconomics. A list of potential research topics will be distributed in class.
For each topic, 5-6 required readings are suggested. Extra supplementary readings may be added at
your own discretion.

Each group needs to submit only one joint report, not to exceed 15 pages (double-spaced with 12-
point font size and 1-inch page margins), excluding references, footnotes, and appendix.

To write a literature review, you are not expected to create an original theory or conduct an original
empirical study. Instead you are expected to compare, contrast, summarize, or criticize the research
findings of previous work in the literature. In the current context, 5-6 previous works have been
identified for you. Most of them are academic research papers published in economics journals and
may be technically demanding. You are not expected to fully grasp the details of the methodology, but
you are expected to understand the general contributions of these papers: what ideas, results or
propositions has the paper advanced? What are the main implications of each papers findings? The
better you understand these papers, the sharper and more insightful a review you can produce.

As a rule of thumb, the review of previous work should make up 80 percent or more of the total report.
Your task is to synthesize and organize the material, so that an uninformed reader can learn about the
topic at hand from reading your literature review. You are welcome to present your own conclusions,
opinions and even criticisms about the papers under review, but only after you have carefully
discussed the content of the papers.

You are expected to adopt the tone of an academic article in your report, particularly in the use of
references. Be sure to provide full citations, including authors names; titles of articles, journals,
chapters, and books; publishers; publication years; page numbers of articles; etc., and cite the author,
year, and/or page number in the body of the report. Refer to any standard bibliography style guide
(Appendix C gives some examples), but be consistent and use the same style in all sections of your
report.

The written report should be submitted within a week after you have made your presentation.

Students are reminded that SMU takes a serious view towards issues of intellectual honesty. For this
course, any sources that you employ or ideas that you adopt from prior researchers should be
referenced when you write up your term paper to give due attribution. (See Appendix C on the
appropriate style for making citations.) Instances of plagiarism will be dealt with seriously in
accordance with standard university practices.

Economics 235: International Macroeconomics Ruanjai SUWANTARADON
Singapore Management University 2014-2015 Term 1



2. Class presentation (10%)

Starting from Week 11, there will be project presentations every week (see schedule below). Your
class presentation should be a concise summary of your written report. You will have 25 minutes for
the group presentation, including Q&A. You can nominate 1 or 2 persons in your group to present
your overall group report, while other group members stand ready to answer questions. One grade
will be given for all students in the same group.

Each group should prepare 1 multiple-choice question on one of the most important points in your
presentation, which will be handed out to the entire class at the beginning of the presentation and
whose answer should be clear to students who listen attentively to your presentation. The question
should be emailed to me two days before the presentation so that copies can be made before class
time. There should be 5 possible answers to each multiple-choice question and only 1 correct answer.
The correct answer should not be indicated on the handout prepared for the class, or given directly to
the class during the presentation, but an answer key should be turned in to me with your question.
The question will be used in determining part of your grade on the presentation, so prepare them
carefully. The primary purpose of these questions is to provide the class with strong incentives to
listen carefully to the presentations, and to ask questions when something is not clear. Limit your
question content to the required readings for each research topic, so the class may refer to the source
for verification if they could not fully understand your presentation on the spot.

Tentative schedule for term project

Week 3 Each group must submit by e-mail to the TA: (1) A list of names of all members of your
team and (2) a list of your three top choices for research topics.
Week 4 Research Topics assigned
Week 11 Project presentations, Topics 1-3
Week 12 Project presentations, Topics 4-6
Week 13 Project presentations, Topics 7-9

3. Here are some helpful hints for searching for the listed papers or supplementary readings using
electronic resources available at SMU:

EconLit is an electronic database of economics articles and books. You can search in EconLit by
author, title, journal, etc., but usually you will want to do a keyword search. It is available via SMU
library at:
http://libproxy.smu.edu.sg/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=
ehost&defaultdb=ecn.

You may also search in J STOR, which includes a narrower range of economics journals. It is
available at http://www.jstor.org. To obtain full access to the database, you need to access the SMU
network via VPN or be physically in the SMU network
(http://libproxy.smu.edu.sg/login?url=http://www.jstor.org)

You may also search in Economist.com for articles related to your research topic that provide a more
accessible treatment of the subject intended for the general public. To obtain full access to the
magazine, you need to access it via SMU library under e-journals.

The research guide for our course provided by the library is at
http://researchguides.smu.edu.sg/intlmacroeconomics.


Appendix C: Style of References and Citations
References: click http://www.aeaweb.org/sample_references.pdf for a detailed style guide
Some examples for citations:
o A similar procedure is explored by Helpman and Krugman (1985, pp. 1012).
o This argument is discussed in Helpman, et al. (2004).
o This argument is discussed in Helpman, Melitz, and Yeaple (2004).
o . (See Acemoglu 2002 for a detail discussion) .