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.