Kort om Financial Frictions, Liquidity, and the Business Cycle

Can you give an example of a problem you go through in the course?

We study how financial frictions, mostly from asymmetric information, affect macroeconomic outcomes with emphasis on the amplification and persistence of temporary fluctuations. For example, if firms have difficulty in finding alternative sources of financing, then a shock that affects aggregate bank credit will have an impact on aggregate investment and economic activity even if there is no underlying change in firms’ productivity.

Are there any courses it would be an advantage to pass before this?

Hard to say, I designed this course such that it had minimal overlap with other courses in the Masters program, such as “Financial Markets” taught by Peter Norman Sørensen, “Monetary Economics” taught by Henrik Jensen, “The Economics of Banking” taught by Hans Keiding. As with any course that focuses more on understanding a given phenomenon (here the business cycle) than the development of tools, the more experienced the student the more he/she will gain from it.

Does this course give you abilities to join other courses?

The course should broaden the understanding of business cycle fluctuations. This should be useful to other courses on the topic. With respect to tools, we will only cover some aspects of the theory of asymmetric information (like adverse selection and moral hazard), that are also useful in other fields.  

If I like this course, are there any other course I can join which complements this?

See my answer to the second question. It is very likely that if you like a part of this course you will find another one that would complement it (e.g. if you like the new Keynesian models covered, you can take the course “Monetary Economics” by Henrik Jensen).

What could be a master thesis topic related to your course?
I think that a Master thesis can be written from any of the topics covered. That is one of the reasons why the evaluation requires that students write a research proposal based on a topic covered. It is a good exercise, and it can be the building block of a thesis later 

Financial Frictions, Liquidity, and the Business Cycle udbydes på kandidatdelen, og den fulde kursusbeskrivelse kan læses her