Int'l Monetary

I have taught 6 different sections of International Monetary Theory (Econ 459) at Brigham Young University since Fall 2012 with a total of 181 students. This class is an upper-division field course in the BYU undergraduate economics major. As such, it includes the students becoming familiar with a few academic papers as well as completing standard course material. My strategy in teaching the course is to spend the first two-thirds of the course going through the last half (chapters 11 to 19) of Husted's and Melvin's textbook, International Economics, eighth edition. I also augment the chapter on foreign exchange risk with a utility-based derivation of the concepts of risk aversion, certainty equivalent, and risk premium. I then spend the last third of the course teaching the students a simplified steady-state version of the two-country monetary macro model from my paper, "Is Openness InfIationary: Policy Commitment and Imperfect Competition" (J of Macro, 2012). This gives the students an idea of how one could answer monetary and macroeconomic questions using a model with an endogenous current account, nominal exchange rate, interest rate, and in which monetary policy is chosen optimally.

Comparison of my average student evaluations in Econ 459

(max score is 8) since Winter 2013

Since 2013, my students have given my Econ 459 class an overall course rating averaging 6.8 out of 8.0. This compares to the average overall course rating of 6.5 for all Economics course sections, 6.6 for all courses in the college, and 6.7 for all BYU course sections over that same time period.

Also in my Econ 459 sections since 2013, my students have given me an overall instructor rating averaging 7.3 out of 8.0. This compares to the average instructor rating of 6.8 for all Economics course sections, 6.9 for all courses in the college, and 7.0 for all BYU course sections over that same time period.

Course Materials for Econ 459 from Winter 2015