Teaching courses in macroeconomics and monetary policy with Bloomberg analytics
Students learn about data and about economic events better when they can put their hands on the data or manipulate it. For that reason, we find it valuable to give students hands-on experience with macroeconomic data in the classroom. Though students learn about macroeconomic data by looking at graphs of data, they are more fully engaged when they create such graphs themselves. Making them do this helps to reinforce in their minds the economic relationships they see in the data. They also develop a deeper understanding of both data and theory. Our work in the classroom suggests that such hands-on experiences lead to better retention of classroom material by students, which in turn generates improved test results. We also believe that such learning is of value to the students in later internships and jobs. Thus, we believe that using Bloomberg in the classroom enhances student learning and gives students a better real-life understanding of economics.
Our objective in this paper is to demonstrate how to teach an experiential- learning-based course on macroeconomics and monetary policy by utilizing real- time data and analytical tools available in Bloomberg. Students are engaged in a laboratory setting to analyze issues at the forefront of macroeconomics and monetary policy.
In the paper, we first illustrate some examples of how to use Bloomberg. In the following section, we do some sector analysis. After that, we show how to use Bloomberg for analyzing monetary policy. Finally, we look at a few case studies.
Keywords: experiential learning, macroeconomics, monetary policy