Independent Courses
The following is a list of courses that I have independently prepared and taught as the instructor of record.
Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory (EC313)
Asynchronous. Spring 2023. Class size: 120.
Description: This class is designed to provide economics majors and minors, as well as interested non-majors, the theoretical foundations necessary to understand the macroeconomic problems commonly confronted in developed market economies, and to evaluate solutions to those problems. I teach students how to build models that help explain fluctuations in output, employment, the price level, inflation, interest rates, and other key macroeconomic variables. Students also learn how to use models to understand how policy changes (for example, monetary policy, tax reductions, and deficit spending) may affect macroeconomic variables, with primary applications to the U.S. and other developed economies. I build my course content around Olivier Blanchard’s 8th edition of Macroeconomics using recent data, and provide more detailed coverage of certain topics.
Money and Banking (EC370)
Fall 2021. Winter 2023. Class size: 60.
Description: In this course I teach students how the monetary and banking systems function, interact, and ultimately cause fluctuations in the macroeconomy. I tend to put more emphasis on an intuitive understanding of how the incentives of key players and institutions across both systems drive their decision-making, which I leverage to construct simplified yet informative models of the aggregate economy. I then try to apply the models to as many historical episodes and realistic hypothetical scenarios as I possibly can, given the time constraint. The usual required textbook for this course at University of Oregon is Frederic Mishkin’s Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, but I prefer to use Laurence Ball’s Money, Banking and Financial Markets while also drawing upon Mishkin’s materials and Foundations of Financial Markets and Institutions (Fabozzi et al.).
Monetary Policy (EC470)
Summer 2021. Class size: 30.
Description: In this course I teach students how the monetary system functions, and how central banks may use monetary policy to manipulate its trajectory. I put less emphasis on quantitative modeling skills (for which the UO Econ. Department offers other advanced macroeconomics courses), and more on economic intuition, historical awareness, and institutional knowledge. Similar to EC370, the required textbook for this course at University of Oregon is Frederic Mishkin’s Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, but I prefer to use Laurence Ball’s Money, Banking and Financial Markets for its exceptionally friendly exposition.
Student Feedback
The following chart shows student feedback aggregated across all of my independent courses.
A = “Beneficial to my learning”; B = “Neutral”; C = “Needs improvement”.
Select student comments:
Gio does a fantastic job taking very complex subjects and putting them into plain English. Its very common to see professors especially in economics make the subject more complex than it has too, but Gio is not one of those professors.
I appreciate the effort that it takes to teach a course in such a way that it is very beneficial to the student, something a lot of professors especially in economics that I have been taught by, don’t seem to care about. Cheers to you and my experience in your course and classroom is what I wish every economics course I have taken at UO would’ve been like.
Great teacher.
Teaching Assistance
The following is a list of courses I have assisted as TA.
Introduction to Econometrics (EC320)
Spring 2022.
Undergraduate-level course taught by Emmett Saulnier.
Access my weekly R coding labs on GitHub.
Advanced Macroeconomic Theory (EC413/513)
Winter 2022.
Master’s-level macroeconomics course taught by Prof. George Evans.
Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory (EC313)
Winter 2022.
Undergraduate-level macroeconomics course taught by Prof. David Evans.
Doctoral Macroeconomics III (EC607)
Spring 2021.
Final module in the PhD Core Macro sequence taught by Prof. David Evans.
Access my weekly Julia coding labs on GitHub.
Doctoral Macroeconomics II (EC607)
Winter 2021.
Second module in the PhD Core Macro sequence taught by Prof. Shankha Chakraborty.
Doctoral Macroeconomics I (EC607)
Fall 2020.
First module in the PhD Core Macro sequence taught by Prof. Bruce McGough.
Resources
Here are some resources from which I’ve benefitted greatly over the years, both as a teacher and a student:
Macroeconomics & Monetary Economics
-
Statistical Modeling of Monetary Policy and its Effects – Chris Sims
-
Lectures Notes on Graduate Macroeconomics – Christopher Carroll
-
Notes on Computational Methods for Macroeconomics – Makoto Nakajima