Assignment
Objective: Tolook at the roles of the IMF and the roles and actions of one of the major central banks (ECB, Bank of England, the Bank of Japan or the Federal Reserve) since the Financial Crisis of 2007/8 up until the present, commenting on the impact of monetary policies in the UK, EU, Japan or the US.
1. Outline the aims and objectives of the IMF in the global financial system.
2. Outline the aims and objectives of the four major central banks (listed above) and highlight any national differences in approach between them.
3. Describe the measures taken by one of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japanor the Bank of England since the financial crisis. Candidates should look at inflation, unemployment rates, economic growth, bond yields and equity markets.
4. Download from Yahoo! Finance adjusted monthly closing indices levels for the S&P 500, Nikkei 225, FTSE 250 and the STOXX Europe 600 for 5 years to September 2017. Comment on the performance of each indexin relation to your observations in Part 3.
5. Plot the currency exchange rates of the US Dollar vs the euro and sterling in the same period. Comment on the graph and any particular implications for global trade.
6. Based on the charts in Sections 4 & 5 and recent newspaper commentary, discuss the following:
Is conventional monetary policy working?
Will lower long-term interest rates lead to inflation?
The risks facing the global economy.
Important details
• To find the data you need, you should use the indices and currency data on sites such as Yahoo! Finance.
• You should prepare your report in Microsoft Word or in another word processing software.
• In each section of the report, you should also include details about the data you used.
• You should submit your coursework electronically using the coursework submission system.
• If you have any questions related to the coursework, please contact Charlie Dove-Edwin to arrange office hours.