Category: NUS Economics

The NUS Department of Economics has an established reputation as one of the largest and leading economics departments in Asia. With more than 50 faculty members, our research contributions span all the major fields of economics and have an international impact on the discipline. We also aim to contribute to public policy discussion in Singapore through our research in applied fields and through our outreach activities.

Around 300 undergraduates each year choose Economics as their major and it is the Department’s role to provide them with an intellectually stimulating introduction to the discipline. We also run a popular one-year applied masters course that admits around 100 students. We maintain a doctoral program that produces close to 10 PhDs each year; upon graduation, many of them take up attractive positions in academia and industry throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The size and research diversity of our faculty members enables a wide range of curricular offerings, so that our students at any level can specialize in almost any area of economics that interests them.

Our Department can trace its origin to 1934 and our graduates have made important contributions to this nation. Goh Keng Swee, one of modern Singapore’s founding fathers, is a graduate of the Department. And so is Goh Chok Tong, the second prime minister of Singapore. In the current Cabinet, Josephine Teo, the Minister of Manpower and Second Minister of Home Affairs is an alumnus. Other prominent figures in public service who studied economics with us include Ngiam Tong Dow (former head of the Civil Service and chairman of the Housing Development Board) and Ravi Menon, the current Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

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Topics include recent developments in monetary theory and policies, rational expectations, demand for money-econometric analysis and empirical studies, the role of money in general equilibrium, a framework for the determination of money supply, issues in monetary policy such as money neutrality, rules versus discretion, policy credibility, exchange rate determination, monetary policy co-ordination, theories of interest rate determination and structure, credit rationing, issues in bank management, financial markets and instruments, bank regulations, internationalization of banking, and monetary policy and foreign exchange management in Singapore.

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This module draws on the tools of macro‐economic analysis developed in EC2102 and EC3102. It applies the tools to understand the classic and contemporary macroeconomic problems and policies The first half of the semester will be devoted to a quick review of important tools of Macroeconomic analysis. The second half will employ the tools to analyse significant historical as well as contemporary macroeconomic events.

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Class participation: 10%

Assignments: 20%

Mid-terms: 30%

Finals: 40%

This is a mandatory module if you would like to specialise the Monetary and Financial Economics.

The lectures are easy to follow and understand. His lecture notes is very comprehensive so there is no need to read the textbook. However, his examinations is very tricky. Spend some time to think about the analysing questions in finals instead of jumping into it.

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Breakdown:

Tutorial Attendance and Participation: 15%

Midterm (MCQs): 35%

Finals (Structured Questions): 50%

Review:

– Very challenging module because for every lecture there are many new terms/definition (possibly more than 10) to pick up

– For people with poor memory like myself, it can be quite challenging to memorise tons of formulae and I always derive the formulae on the spot but this takes up time and given the time-constraints, it is super difficult

– Very fun and meaningful module. I had some basic knowledge in finance prior to taking this module and I would highly recommend you to take it especially if you have NO background in finance as you will learn a lot.

Assessment/Tips:

– Attend ALL tutorials and do them beforehand so you can present your answers in class which counts towards participation. Do try to present at least 2-3 times throughout the semester (depending on your class size).

– Midterm examinations consists of 26 MCQ and the duration is 1 hour, the questions involves a lot of computations and you need to work VERY fast and accurately to excel. Advice: Memorising some of the basic formulae will save you time and ask for a piece of paper during the exam to create a formula reference sheet as you attempt the questions so you don’t have to derive the formulae again and again

– Final Examinations were all structured and more time-friendly but there were 3-4 challenging parts. Apart from the Black-Scholes Formula, it is important for you to know how to derive all other formulae so that in the event a new scenario is given, you can use the concepts and principles to get the formulae you need.

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This module focuses on the economic analysis of the following: (1) the structure and role of financial institutions, (2) tools and conduct of monetary policy, including monetary theory. Topics include the role of money, debt and equity; financial institutions and markets; regulation; financial crises; interest rates; commercial bank operations; the money supply process; theories of money demand; conduct of monetary policy and its role in different macroeconomic frameworks: international role of money; monetary policy in Singapore. As financial activities and events affect our everyday lives, this course should be of interest to a wide variety of students.

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Breakdown:

Tutorial Attendance and Participation: 20%

(Optional Forecasting Project)

Midterm (Structured Questions): 30%

Final (Structured Questions): 50%

Review:

– Content is very light, for the first three weeks or so, the lecturer gave a review of some basic probability/statistics and concepts in EC3303.

– The mathematics required is very basic, solving simple equations, differentiation, first-order and second-order conditions, expectation, variance and covariance, conditional probability.

– This module is easy in my opinion and some parts of the module can be really dry but it is a really useful module as you can see how different models are used for different purposes e.g. forecasting or to study the correlation between variables

– It will be an added bonus if you can pick up the STATA commands and run some regressions on your own.

Assessment/Tips:

– Do attend all tutorials and attempt the questions beforehand so that you can present them in class which counts towards your participation. The tutor will nominate students to present to ensure everyone has a fair chance to present.

-There is an optional forecasting project that counts towards a very small portion of your participation, would highly recommend you to do it as it is a good chance to practice your STATA skills and apply the concepts you’ve learned in a real-life situation.

– Midterms and final examinations were similar in difficulty and style, the lecturer provides many past year papers and solutions to them so do practice some of them if not all. Pay attention to tiny details in the lecture notes and reflect upon them as the exams can be quite comprehensive.

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Taught by Kelvin Seah. Wonderful, patient lecturer who always shows the proofs in lectures. For exams, it is more of the interpretation of the STATA results that Mr Seah is testing, rather than the memorisation of formulas. However, it is important to be very familiar with the OLS estimators because it forms the basis for all the regressions.

Steep bellcurve as always. Chill module with 2 group homework (minor use of STATA in the homework).

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Mid-terms, class participation, finals. Mid-term results formed a nice bell curve. Quite a number of people failed to do the participation as usual and this made it easier. Finals were open-book but the book was useless. Not just that, the final-week-revision I did was largely useless to be honest, not because the finals were terribly easy. The finals were doable but time consuming due to the need to decipher the question and draw graphs. I left 2 parts of a question blank which constitutes about 5 marks but this was due to my idiocy that led to poor time management rather than lack of knowledge. Overall, both tests were very manageable.

Simple and straightforward mode of assessment. Content is an expansion of EC2102 (duh) which introduces students to the open economy and adds a little to the IS-LM/AD-AS model. Quite a bit of content is involved so regular studies is recommended as catching up can be a horror. Textbook(s) is/are a must for this module and the strategy to ace it is the same as for EC1101E and EC2102: read the textbook, understand the content and do tutorials. No webcasts, but I didn’t go to lectures anyway.

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Taking this module was extremely lit. First 6 weeks was about micro and the content was really brief compared to H2 A level Econs. Expect to learn a couple of new graphs and concepts. There were a lot more new concepts in the last 6 weeks on macro.

Workload:

Felt extremely light. Lectures were all webcasted (Dr Seet’s lectures were pretty interesting to listen to though). I could basically run through the slides and complete the tutorial in 1h just in time for my tutorial slot. Present your answers during tutorial and you should secure your participation marks. After the tutorial, complete the weekly 10 qn luminus quiz (not graded) for participation marks as well.

Assessment:

Mid-term and Finals were both closed book Examplify mcq quizzes. There was comfortably enough time to complete them. Questions can be tricky in terms of wording. The department does not release past year papers so try to get additional practice from fass/biz friends taking a different version of econs.

Final comments:

Compared to my other engineering mods, this mod was extremely chill. I had intially expected to only squeeze a B+/A- because my midterm results were close to the median score but I was pleasantly surprised with an A after finals. Easy for students with econs background, and a good intro to those who are new too!

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