ECON 3030

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

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.

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.

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

Before taking this course, I was told 100 times over that it was extremely difficult -- now that I'm done with it I strongly disagree. Doyle lectures very similarly to his Principles classes, but gets a little more into the content because this is clearly what he is very knowledgable and passionate about. The class is super interesting if you liked macroeocnomics, he spends the first half of the course on valuation etc. and then moves into detailed monetary policy at the end. Week by week there isn't much work for the class, and if you don't understand something in lecture he has office hours twice a week where he is more than happy to help any student with content questions and give some more examples for topics that were covered in lectures. Personally, I don't think you need to read the textbook, he bases everything off of what he covers in lecture. There are lecture recordings and recording of how to go through practice problems for each exam on Canvas. There are 6 problem sets over the course of the semester, none of them very hard, and then other than that your grade is made up of TA points, 2 quizzes, 2 midterms, and the final. I thought that it was very easy to get over 90% on the midterms and got close to it on the final. Not sure what the midterm averages were, but he ended up making a 94 the cutoff for an A in the course, with the rest of the grading distribution almost identical to the College standard. I was able to get an A with a 93% average on the midterms and an 85% on the final. Absolutely reccomend this class.

Alright, OBJECTIVELY, this is not that hard a course its just a little unforgiving. The content you learn in the class is about stocks, bonds, the 2008 financial crisis, and a little on monetary policy. He also includes some articles that he enjoys and will spend a bit of lecture going over them throughout the semester. The actual content and work of the course is extremely easy. The problem sets are extremely simple and Chat-able and I'd say all the equations/graphs you learn are very simple and straightforward to learn. The only problem which I can see why people struggle a bit is the tests will ask some derivations of concepts you learn and the best way I can explain it is if you aren't able to understand the concepts intuitively then you may struggle. Like one concept you learn is when interest rates go up bond prices go down, and what 'bond price' actually means isn't actually the price to buy but more so the price to sell. Just some nuances which require you to firmly understand the content, but realistically it isn't that hard you just have to understand what you're writing instead of just raw memorization. Also like I mentioned there's only 2 exams and then the final and those basically determine your whole grade. There is a dutch knockout but I don't think most people end up doing it. Overall I enjoyed the course and I never went to lecture after like the 2nd one I just took notes from the slides and I think I'll end up with a B+/A- which I'm more than happy with based on the effort I put in. Highly recommend this course too since I think its very applicable to real life.

Syllabus Info: Class Participation ~7%, Two Quizzes ~5% each, Exam 1 and 2 ~17% each, Final ~34%, Problem Sets ~5%, TA Points ~3%.

Overview: Money and Banking focuses heavily on the fundamentals of financial instrument markets and the banking system. You learn about the money market, bonds, stock market, derivatives, central bank, FX, 2008 Financial Crisis, Covid Recession and more. Concepts are not extremely difficult to grasp with the end of the course being more difficult due to the concepts being applied to real life financial crises and current economy. This class is an easy A- if you put in moderate effort and a very achievable A if you invest time. I started not going to lectures at the end of the year and ended with an A- due to my final exam grade. If you go to every lecture and invest time reviewing each week, you will do well.

Doyle tracks participation through Kahoot games during class, but will send out an email with a make-up Kahoot if you miss a class. My TA personally awarded TA points through two take-home quizzes through the semester. The actual full class quizzes were take-home quizzes during my semester. Both sets of quizzes were easy to achieve perfect or near perfect scores on. The only real challenge to earn points is in exams. Problem sets are completion based, but should be treated as normal assignments because they directly prepare you for exams.

Doyle is engaging in lecture and the concepts you learn are valuable. I would recommend this course to all Econ majors, especially those looking for a manageable class that has value for understanding the Macroeconomy.