About the course
An intensive summer treatment of the theory of money and banking and how the financial system actually works in practice — markets, institutions, central banking, monetary policy, financial crises, and the international financial system. Twelve sessions over six weeks, following Mishkin's The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets (13th edition).
Grading: quizzes 40%, participation 10%, group project 20%, final exam 30%. Five weekly quizzes (best four count), one comparative group project on a country's financial system, and a cumulative final in Session 12.
Schedule and slides
Slide decks are published here as each session is finalized. Chapters refer to Mishkin (13e). Quiz dates and the group-project proposal deadline are listed in the right column.
| # | Date | Topic | Materials | Due |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tue, May 26 | Why Study Money & Banking; the Financial System (Ch. 1–2) | Ch. 1 deck Ch. 2 deck | |
| 2 | Thu, May 28 | What Is Money?; Understanding Interest Rates (Ch. 3–4) | Ch. 3 deck Ch. 4 deck | |
| 3 | Tue, Jun 2 | Behavior of Rates; Risk & Term Structure; Stock Market & EMH (Ch. 5–7) | Ch. 5 deck Ch. 6 deck Ch. 7 deck | Quiz 1 |
| 4 | Thu, Jun 4 | Financial Structure; Bank Management (Ch. 8–9) | Ch. 8 deck Ch. 9 deck | |
| 5 | Tue, Jun 9 | Regulation; Banking Industry (Ch. 10–11) | Ch. 10 deck Ch. 11 deck | Quiz 2 |
| 6 | Thu, Jun 11 | Financial Crises (Ch. 12) | Ch. 12 deck | Project proposal |
| 7 | Tue, Jun 16 | Central Banks; Money Supply Process (Ch. 13–14) | Ch. 13 deck Ch. 14 deck | Quiz 3 |
| 8 | Thu, Jun 18 | Monetary Policy: Tools & Conduct (Ch. 15–16) | Ch. 15 deck Ch. 16 deck | |
| 9 | Tue, Jun 23 | The Foreign Exchange Market (Ch. 17) | Ch. 17 deck | Quiz 4 |
| 10 | Thu, Jun 25 | International Financial System (Ch. 18) | Ch. 18 deck | |
| 11 | Tue, Jun 30 | AD/AS Analysis; Monetary Policy Theory (Ch. 22–23) | Ch. 22 deck Ch. 23 deck | Quiz 5 · Project presentations |
| 12 | Thu, Jul 2 | Final Exam — cumulative, 3-hour, closed-book | — | Final Exam |
Practice quizzes
Each practice quiz is the complete pool of multiple-choice questions for that chapter. The weekly in-class quiz is a random subset of exactly these questions, so working through the practice set is the most efficient prep. Each PDF includes the answer key on the last page.
Chapters 14–18 are reviewed through the final-exam materials.
Teaching team
Instructor
Ritsu Kitagawa
Kravis Hall 590-3 · office hours by appointment
RKitagawa25@gsb.columbia.edu
Teaching assistant
Jesus David Zavala Ovando
Office hour: Thursdays 1:00–3:00 pm
Lehman Library, Room 329A
jdz2121@columbia.edu
Prerequisites and materials
Required: intermediate microeconomics (ECON UN3211) and intermediate macroeconomics (ECON UN3213), or equivalent. Comfort with single-variable calculus and basic constrained optimization is assumed.
Textbook: Frederic S. Mishkin, The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, 13th edition (Pearson).
Official course listing: Columbia Directory of Classes — ECON UN3265 (Summer 2026).
Other resources
Related research — some by the instructor, some by others — for students who want to see the course's themes — financial markets, corporate governance, and the firm — applied in current empirical work.