Armenian Independent University - Summer School - June 28 to July 9, 2021


Syllabus - Finance and Macroeconomics


Course Description - This course will cover a number of topics at the intersection of finance and macroeconomics. First, we will begin with the essentials of finance, introducing the students to concepts such as the time value of money, net present value calculations; to methods used for valuing projects and financial securities (e.g. stocks, bonds), and; to the basics of banking theory. We will then move to topics in macroeconomics, where we will introduce the students to the study of financial crises; the basics of monetary economics and central banking, and; finally, to how economists think about growth and development in economies such as Armenia.


Requirements: Intermediate Microeconomics and Macroeconomics, Basic Statistics and Econometrics.


Course Plan

June 28 - Vladimir Asriyan, CREI, UPF and Barcelona GSE

    • Financial markets and the macroeconomy; broad introduction to role of financial markets in the economy, financial development and financial crises,

    • Simple aggregate data analysis and models of the financial accelerator.


June 29 - Bilal Kchouri, University of Luxembourg

    • Banking and Sustainability:

      1. Social and environmental challenges that face banking

      2. Principles of alternative banking

      3. Future of sustainable banking


June 30 - Taron Paytyan, HSE/MSU, Market Risk, Sberbank CIB, Moscow

    • Fixed Income

      1. Introduction to Fixed-Income

      2. Issuance, Trading, and Funding

      3. Introduction to Fixed-Income Valuation

      4. Understanding Fixed Income Risk and Return


July 1 - Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan, St. John’s University

    • Sovereign debt

      1. General contours of the international capital markets since the pandemic

      2. The Caucasus and Central Asia: vulnerabilities and opportunities

      3. Diaspora bond

    • Exchange rate

      1. Gold and foreign reserves composition

      2. The dominant currency paradigm and exchange market pressure

      3. Small open economy development: alternative models


July 2 - Robert Davtyan, MIT’19, Goldman Sachs New York

    • Motivation, Finance and Life.

      1. Why Finance?

      2. Importance of Motivation and Passion in what you do!

      3. No Free Lunch concept, Risk/Reward framework.

      4. Systematic/idiosyncratic risks.

      5. Extending dimensions -> nonlinear exposures (in example of financial derivatives)

      6. Practical opportunities in the financial industry.

      7. What to study to be competitive

      8. Q&A


July 5-7 - Hayk Sargsyan, UPF; and Armen Avakyan, HSE, Bank of Russia

  • Basics of business cycle theory and monetary economics.

  • Monetary policy and central banking in practice.


July 8 - Tatevik Sekhposyan, Texas A&M University

    • Basics of empirical methods for macroeconomics.

    • (Factor augmented) vector autoregressions and identification of structural shocks.


July 9 - Vahagn Jerbashian, Universitat de Barcelona, BEAT, and CESifo

    • Basics of growth theory.

    • Aggregate data analysis and models of economic growth