ECON 3030

Money and Banking is a very good econ elective. It is easy to do well in, relatively interesting, and Prof Doyle is very nice. The content is interesting if you enjoy learning about bonds, stocks, the banking system in the US, and monetary policy. While it does not go into extreme detail on everything, it provides a very good overview of these concepts. There are a lot of formulas and real world application to present day economic events, such as post-COVID monetary policy. Prof Doyle is a very nice guy and is eager to help his students. He gets on tangents sometimes in class that can sometime fall flat, but he is really a good guy who is passionate about his work. He allowed us to have a notecard for formulas on the exams which was super helpful. I had no problem doing very well with minimal work outside of class.
#tCFF23

This course is designed overall good. Professor Doyle puts recording of each lecture online for lazy people who do not want to go to class in person. His in-person lectures, with all my respect, are boring and not very helpful. He sometimes mentioned something that is about the real world and it will possibly appear in the exam. However, most of the content in the exam will be based on the slides. There are many questions about definitions and using formulas to calculate rates, and thus if you can go over the slides well you can get 90+ every time.

However, the problem of this course is about its grading. Professor Doyle makes the so-called "Dutch Knockout" an option for grading. That is you can either use all the components to have a grade or simply make the final exam grade as your final grade. This Dutch Knockout is a bullshit because Professor Doyle will make the final harder than all other exams, just like he did in ECON2020. At the end of the semester, the grade for an A was set to 95.5 so if you want to get an A, you cannot make too many mistakes in the former exams and quizzes. Last but not least, you need to find a good TA for yourself if you want to do good in this course.

Very easy, very informative class. Lectures are a bit dull at times, but Professor Doyle is funny. Exams are extremely fair, everything comes from either lectures or articles we read (or, as other reviews have noted, recorded lectures from COVID). 3x5 index card means that memorizing formulas isn't really needed. The material this class covers is extremely relevant to the financial world, and I've learned more about the real world in this class than most others I've taken. It's not like I was on the edge of my seat every class, but when you really pay attention the material is fascinating. Doyle is also incredibly helpful in office hours; I only went once for help with extra credit and he explained everything I needed to know in a way that made a lot of sense. There's also Dutch knockout, so if you mess up during the semester you can replace everything with just your grade on the final, which is itself not terribly difficult.

OLD (~2016) REVIEWS AREN'T CONSISTENT WITH WHAT THE CLASS IS NOW. This is just my opinion. There aren't 30+ page packets of practice questions (discussion attendance isn't even required) and as far as I can tell the material is taught correctly.

Doyle himself is clearly knowledgeable about the content and wants to help his students. His slides were enough notes for me to do well, but he would ramble on and not finish his lectures, relying on COVID era recorded videos to finish units. As for the class itself, about 70% of the grade is exams which were not super difficult and often contained questions very similar to those given in the problem sets. You were also allowed a 3x5 index card for formulas and notes. Some of the exam questions were a little vague though and could be graded harshly. Participation, extra credit, and the completion-based problem sets serve as grade buffers.

Would definitely recommend for a fairly easy and low workload elective. A lot of the content is basic information about stocks, bonds, and monetary policy that is super relevant regardless of what career/major you are and hopefully will help your investing goals/plans for the future. #tCFF23

Money and Banking is not the most interesting, nor the most difficult, Economics elective I have taken. The material covered – which includes bonds, stocks, derivatives, financial intermediation, bank management, and monetary policy – is not too challenging. The exam questions are also relatively straightforward and often closely reflect the questions asked on previous quizzes and homework assignments. I remain very surprised by the vast number of reviewers who suggest that this class is impossibly difficult; while a bit disorganized, it is easily possible to earn a B or above in this course.

Carter Doyle himself introduces an interesting perspective to the course, having worked in the financial markets and banking industry around the time of the 2008 recession; he provides fun anecdotes and is overall a very friendly and nice professor. However, I think that this course could have covered more content and that we could have explored some of these concepts in a more in-depth manner. Doyle's lectures would often consist of him reading the lecture slides to the class and then dismissing us early. I would, though, recommend this course to anyone interested in a not-too-stressful Economics elective that covers essential material only briefly skimmed over in the intro and intermediate macro courses.

Class is straight forward, memorizing lecture notes will probably get you a B. To get an A on exams you'll need to read the assigned text book chapters thoroughly and do extra practice problems.

Doyle is a smart and great guy that was a macro decision maker at a large hedge fund. Materials not too difficult, gives you everything you need to know upfront.

Doyle did absolutely nothing. The material itself is very interesting and useful but Doyle is absolutely awful. His test were extremely difficult and the T.A.'s were also not helpful at all and graded super harshly

The class was harder than expected, and I probably should have read much more than I did. The Problem Sets are graded on completion which is really helpful, and they aren't that frequent. Professor Doyle knows a lot about financial markets and the material, but sometimes his lectures can be really boring and feel to drag on even though they're only 50 minutes. He moves through the slides kinda fast but he posts all of them and they make more sense if you read beforehand. The Quizzes are pretty difficult, but he does post review videos which I highly recommend watching, as about 80% of the material comes directly from those. Overall not terrible but you definitely need to put in the work to get a good grade. There is basically no curve at all, and the cutoff for an A is a 95 which I would think is borderline impossible, but apparently people do it each semester.

This class is not as easy as you think it will be. The lectures Doyle provides are NOT helpful for his exams. The class average on exam 1 was lower C, upper D range. Doyle teaches the absolute basics of the class and then expects the student to read a thousand pages of a textbook then put it all together. It is only twice a week, and isn't very helpful. The class is almost never on pace to the schedule and Doyle has many anecdotes that distract the class. If you don't have to take this class, don't. Overall it was a waste of time and mostly consisted of cramming for the final which was worth around 40% of your total grade or 100% if you happen to Dutch Knockout (score higher on the exam than the whole semester combined). He essentially hands out 100 free points through 40 being participating in Kahoot! questions and 60 being homeworks that get graded on participation. These are essential or else I'd guarantee you the class average would be in the C range. Overall Doyle is not the best professor to take this with unless you really enjoy self-teaching. Not super exciting and fun especially since it is usually an early course.

This course teaches about the banking system and some investment tools. After taking it, the strongest feeling that I have is that this course should not be called "Money and Banking". Rather, it should be "Investment tools and Currency". Like ECON 2010 and ECON 2020, to be successful in this course, you have to read the textbook repeatedly. For the lecture, the only thing that you need to memorize is the formula for calculation. The course also has the Dutch Knockout which saved my GPA, but you should not expect to succeed in the final easily if you had knowledge about the course previously.

For the course structure and syllabus design, even though the structure may not be the best in best, I could definitely say that it ensures basic fairness and clearness. The content distribution may not be very suitable for me at the end of the term, but remnant parts are good.

For TA sessions, TAs will only go over the course contents and give some exercises which have a relatively great difference between the exam questions, so you cannot work like an ECON3030 student. I didn't realize this at the beginning and suffered great pressure from my grade.

For the professor, I would give a neutral opinion. I highly suspected if people got a high score on their finals since the grade instruction was hard and most of my friends did not get a high grade. The course could crash your GPA if you didn't put enough effort into it.

At the beginning and the midway of the course, I seldom went to the lecture. At that time, I always thought that I would still get a high grade even though I only watched the recordings and did not join the lecture because I have previously learned this field. However, the reality was I got an extremely low score on the two midterms. For this course, my only suggestion would be to act like a normal student. If you follow his instructions, read the book, and take notes, you can definitely get a good grade on this course.

Professor Doyle is a great guy, and I am not quite sure why so many people say this class is so difficult. Full disclosure, however: I am a finance concentrator in the Comm School.

I agree the fact that ~80% of your grade comes from three exams does not leave a lot of room for error if you aren't a great test taker like myself, but I did not find much of the material itself to be difficult. If you are fairly financially inclined or are familiar with the basics of value investing (e.g. you are comfortable with the time value of money and have a basic understanding of how stocks are valued), you should find the first exam to be very easy. The second exam was a bit trickier and more abstract, but it's not terrible. The last part of the course is a lot of review from Intermediate Macro with some new topics. Some of the exam questions are poorly worded/confusing, but for the most part, I thought the exams were very straightforward. A large portion of the questions on all three exams revolve around plugging numbers into a formula. Additionally, there is very little work from week to week, with only 6 problem sets that are simply graded for completion.

I will say that I had two main complaints about the course. The first is that the lectures often felt disjointed from one another, but I found them to be sufficient as I never read a single page of the textbook. Second, I found the TA to be rather arrogant and even obnoxious at times. That said, he seems like a good guy at heart.

All in all, I highly recommend this class if you are interested in financial markets and/or investing.

This class is interesting, I've had friends who've really liked it and those who've wanted nothing to do with it. Lectures were pretty ineffective, and I found myself zoning out a lot. The problem sets are very similar to the tests however, and I also found reading the textbook to be extremely helpful - it covered for Doyle's mistakes/inabilities to explain concepts clearly and correctly/flat out failure to mention things. Grading is all on putting in the time - if you read and understand the material beforehand, you'll be fine. Just assuming that this course is a cakewalk though is where it gets dangerous from some kids, so make sure you put it the time that you need.

This is the review you need before deciding to take this class:
DO NOT TAKE IT. DO NOT TAKE IT.

Doyle is a nice guy. But lectures aren't really helpful unless you read the powerpoints/textbook ahead of time. He is definitely an interesting professor, but you don't really get the material from him. TAs are borderline useless, and rarely in line with the professor. Exams are kind of random and graded very harshly. Overall, if you are extremely interested in this class and have some background knowledge or willing to read the textbook word for word, take it. Otherwise, not really worth the struggle. Dutch knockout is applied so most people ride on that. Doyle basically gives full points for all the work except exams and quizzes.

Carter Doyle is a great person, and an above average lecturer. He has tons of knowledge on how the financial industry works and will help you tremendously if you want to go that route. He also will do his best to help you with any career questions you have.

The first exam was a bit of a surprise, the grades were really low. I think people not knowing the formulas for stock and bond pricing hurt a lot. Definitely study those hard because they are the bulk of the first exam. The second exam was pretty easy and the final was in between.

Take it, it will help you with pretty much any career path.

I cannot recommend this course. This is the second-hardest Econ course I've taken, after 3720 and, unlike 3720, this one isn't mandatory for the major. No matter how much interest you have in the subject matter, it is not worth the hit to your GPA. Doyle is first and foremost a professional, not an academic. He has experience working as an economist for a bank and, therefore, can reinforce the course material with real-world application. He is not the best teacher. The course is broken down into three units: money; banking; and monetary policy. The subject matter is interesting and useful, but the grading is way too difficult. There is no required homework for this course; rather, you are encouraged to read the textbook and do practice problems. THIS IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR SUCCESS. Attendance at lecture, while necessary for doing well, is also not sufficient for doing well. Lecture will teach you some things the textbook won't, and the textbook will teach you other things that lecture won't. There are clicker quizzes in lecture, though these are usually participation-based. There are two mid-term exams and a final exam. The first exam covers money, the second exam covers banking, and the final exam is cumulative (though weighted more heavily toward monetary policy). There is also the option of a Dutch knockout on the final exam. Otherwise, the course is graded on a total points system. There are also three quizzes, one in the days before each exam. We took one of these in class and two were take-home. There are also take-home portions for the mid-term exams, which are essentially free points. As for the discussion section, my TA was Albert. He allocated our discussion section points by way of quizzes, which were generally difficult. He did curve us somewhat at the end but, given that one of the other TAs allocated points by way of completion of homework assignments, Albert is probably not the best TA to take. I say this because the TAs are not too helpful with learning the course material. Albert is smart and speaks good English. However, it was obvious there was little communication between Doyle and the TAs and they often knew less about what was going on in class than we did. Therefore, the best TA is probably the one that grades discussion section the easiest. All told, this is a very difficult, if interesting, class. In my opinion, it is not worth taking - at least not with Doyle.

Don't look at Doyle as someone who will teach you everything you need to know for the test, but rather as someone who will convert the information from the textbook into knowledge that is applicable to current events. Read the book chapters before going to class, and you will get so much more out of his lectures. However, there are some formulas that are only on his slides and not the textbook, so be sure to copy all of these down. I am not an Econ major or minor but did well in the class- it certainly isn't easy, but it is undoubtedly one of the most applicable classes you will take here

I really enjoyed taking this course. The material is super interesting, however I will say that I definitely put the work in for this class. If you don't understand the material, you will really struggle with this class. But if you find the material interesting and don't mind reading the chapters and doing practice problems from the study guide book, then I would say this class is worth your time.

I wouldn't wish this class upon my worst enemy. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. This class is arbitrarily graded and super disorganized. Doyle is "nice" but that doesn't help you at all. He just take the slides from the textbook publisher (found online) and reads through them in class which is a total waste of time. An an economics major who has received some form of an A in all of my classes (including econometrics and intermediate micro which are notoriously the weed-out classes for the major) I received a C in this class. Not reflective of actual effort -- do not take this class. Normally I do not listen to reviewers who say "do not take this class," but I beg of you, if you value your GPA, listen to me.

This is low key one of the hardest Econ electives out there. The TAs weren't very helpful as they were learning the material with us. The only way I see you can do well in the class is to consistently do practice problems and keep up with the readings. I recommend taking this class with Bethune if possible.

This course is laughably bad. While Doyle is ok for microeconomics his inability to teach more difficult concepts shows in this class. The tests are poorly worded and in some instances actually wrong based of off other economics courses. The TA's this semester barely spoke English and the grading was horribly inconsistent. Avoid this class as much as you can and take other Econ electives if you are in the major. With massive inconsistencies throughout he then makes up a grading rubric at the very end of the class so you don't know where you stand until the end of the semester.

Professor Doyle is a beast take his class, i cant see anything right now and am now sure if any of this is spelled right the glare is unbelievable

professor doyle is a great professor, but his classroom environment can be pretty distracting because he is not strict on phones or laptops. overall. this course is worthwhile because you learn a lot about the stock and bonds markets, how the fed works, and interest rates. etc which are all very practical things to know about.

Highly recommend taking this class during the summer. Doyle makes the material pretty digestible with mainly take home quizzes and an extra credit project. Don't be fooled though - his actual tests can be tricky/difficult and you're expected to memorize the formulas and calculations even if he doesn't explicitly say so during class. Dutch knockout is nice but also deceptive. His final is no walk in the park so it's best to try your best all semester long instead of getting screwed by the final in the end!

This class will be easy if you have some background on the financial markets. BUT it can be painfully difficult if you go in with no background knowledge at all. Even though the material can be interesting, Doyle is a very boring lecturer and lectures can be very confusing as he expects you to know all the terms going in. For midterms and finals, you basically have to read the textbook on your own as class notes are not organized and practice questions are useless most of the time, and TAs basically have no idea what Doyle is teaching in class. It is definitely very difficult to get an A as grading can be arbitrary and you never really know what will be on the exams, but not so difficult to pass by with at least a B. I think the class average was a C+ to a B- with no curve and an A was a 95%.

I cannot stress enough what the person below me said. The class is of about 200 students, and while Doyle is typically an effective -albeit somewhat boring- teacher, he does not meet general expectations. Going to lecture is essentially useless if you haven't read the textbook to understand the weekly material, and if you sit close to the back you can barely hear anything Doyle says, let alone read what he puts on the board. Reading each week is not necessarily difficult (it's usually somewhere between 20-80 pages a week), but it was incredibly tedious for me, as I could never truly take it in unless I wrote extensive notes. My final total of class notes and readings notes was over 80 pages, and more than 60 of those were just the readings. While friendly and approachable, Doyle never seems to direct students towards a tangible framework for the class that leads to a greater understanding of the US banking system. Overall, each unit feel disjointed and often unrelated, making exams nothing more than pure memorization of ALL the course material covered, as Doyle never delivers a much-needed study guide (those 30-40 page "guides" he posts on collab are simply questions from the textbook). Grading is convoluted, as the TAs are not in constant contact with the professor and are out of touch with the class material in general. Criteria for grading is also fairly sloppy, with two midterm exams, clicker questions, TA quizzes, and take home quizzes to supplement a cumulative final exam. While dispersing the value of points would usually be beneficial in a class, it actually hurt me in the end, as my TA was unsympathetic when it came to turning in a quiz a day late (I was sick for handing it in during lecture, and they ask you not to email them the quiz); as a result, I went from having a B+/A- to having to dutch knockout to get the grade I wanted (the final was no pushover, either).

Deceivingly difficult class. Doyle is nice and very likable as a person (super nice in office hours), but he is not a very good professor. If you read the book and memorize everything from the get go, it's doable. But you have to do this way in advance because it's a LOT of material. Don't expect to get anything out of lecture unless you do the reading first. The class did not have good TAs and the practice questions (which are dense packets ranging from 30-40 pages) have long, winded answers that do not really help you solve the numerical questions on the exam. The exams are intentionally written so that you are pressed for time. This would be fine if Doyle gave similar practice questions, but he asks questions you have no experience in solving. Afterwards, the exam keys are not posted to help you study for the final, and Doyle/the TAs rush through the exam reviews. The TAs are not on the same page as the professor or each other and make no attempt to teach you the material. Oftentimes, discussion would last for 20 minutes and then we would be dismissed. Honestly, if Doyle just gave students a formula sheet/more numerical practice questions, the class would be better. My problem is he makes the material more difficult to learn than it has to be. I really wanted to like this class because it's important information that could be interesting, but Professor Doyle does not know how to structure a class. Save yourself from the biggest pain of my fourth year and do not take this class unless you enjoy memorizing entire textbooks on your own.

Don't take this class! Lots of work and exams are really really hard. It is very time-consuming. btw, TA for this class are bad. They are bad at grading. The grading for midterms are confusing.

Amazing professor, Doyle really knows his stuff. This is definitely one of those classes though that it pays to go to lecture for, as he explains the concepts differently than in the book

Carter Doyle is great. He's very smart and has lots of experience in this field. This class is less theoretical and quantitative than other econ classes. Lectures are fairly straightforward but tests are not. Tests are also made up of a take home part, in class part, and a quiz the week before, all on the same material. The TAs all operate independently from each other and from Doyle, which is frustrating. He allows dutch knockout, which is nice because I'll probably have to use it. #tcf2016

Awesome course. Doyle is far and away the best professor for this course. The material can be dry if this subject isn't of interest to you. As a former economist for an investment bank, Doyle knows what he is talking. He puts economics into practice. Less theory than the other economics classes.

This was a big class, but Professor Doyle wrote notes on the tiny chalkboard in small, messy handwriting. The one time he surprised us all with a PowerPoint, he went so quickly that no one could even take notes. Not only that, but most of the time he speaks pretty quietly, even with the mic, and then ends up trailing off and mumbling to himself. So if you take this class, sit close. Also he has a couple quirks that drove me insane. When he gives tests, it's definitely an ordeal. Both weeks that we had a test consisted of a take home quiz due Monday, a take home part of the exam due Wednesday (that was long enough to be a full exam), and then the in class portion also on Wednesday (which was too long to finish in the 50 minute class period, for almost everyone). I found this to be a pretty dull class. It could be the material, but I feel like it would have been better with a different professor.

really interesting. loved the professor. relevant material for understanding the current state of our economy and financial markets. Study hard for midterms or just dutch knockout. get to know professor because he's really nice and knowledgable

Excellent Professor and really interesting class