ECON 17
Watching Wall Street from Washington: Financial Market Analysis for the Public Sector Winter 2019

This is not the current course catalog

This course investigates the strategies for, as well as the relevance of, financial market analysis directed toward the public good. Students will develop a deeper understanding of global financial markets, and learn how that understanding can be leveraged to help shape and achieve policy goals. Specifically, the course will cover five major topics: 1) Basic techniques for financial market analysis across a variety of major asset classes; 2) The characteristics of financial market analysis–its forms, theoretical underpinnings, positive attributes, and deficiencies; 3) The hierarchy of policy relevance of financial market analysis; 4) Costs, risks, and difficulties of financial market analysis for the public sector; and 5) Future challenges and formulations of public sector market analysis given the technological developments in finance, money management, and trading. Readings will primarily be publicly available articles and papers, as well as one basic reference book: Gliner, Greg; Global Macro Trading: Profiting in a New World Economy; Bloomberg Press, 2014. We will meet three times a week for two-hour sessions, with extra discussion and presentation times scheduled in accordance to our needs. Adjunct Instructor Bio: John Fagan ’95, Director of the Treasury Markets Room and former senior strategist at Discovery Capital, holds a JD and an MPA from Harvard and a BA from Williams.