EC 223 - Course overview
EC 223 - Economics of the Canadian Banking and Financial System - Fall 2026
Section A · Tue & Thu 5:30-6:50 p.m. · LH 1009 · Igor Carreira (LH 2058B)
Office hours Wed 3:15-4:15 p.m. - email or knock on the window right of the door
Source: the syllabus in Course Info/
Assessment
| Component | Weight | When | Mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly MyLS quizzes (best 7) | 14% | weekly from Week 2, dates on MyLS | online, two attempts, higher counts |
| Midterm | 37% | Thu Oct 8, during class | in person, closed book |
| Final exam | 49% | Dec 12-23 period | in person, closed book, cumulative |
The midterm is in class on Oct 8 and covers everything taught to that point - multiple choice + short answer. Bring your student ID and a basic non-programmable calculator; a formula sheet is provided if formulas are needed.
If you cannot write the midterm, its 37% moves to the final - but only if you never started it. Formal deferrals go through the Lazaridis petitions process. The final puts more weight on post-midterm material.
Rules worth remembering
- Quizzes: notes and the textbook are allowed, generative AI and other people are not. A missed quiz is a zero before the best-7 average.
- Generative AI is allowed only for general, ungraded study - never for anything graded.
- Email: start every subject line with
[EC223]. Short questions by email; technical ones in office hours. - Lectures are not recorded by him and attendance is expected but ungraded. The syllabus says recording needs permission - you have his verbal OK to audio-record (2026-09-13).
- Digital Textbook Access opt-out deadline: Sept 24. Otherwise $71.99 lands on your October LORIS invoice (code DBK). If you stay in, re-open the resource link on MyLS on or after Sept 29.
- Religious-accommodation requests for in-course assessments: by Sept 24.
Materials
- Mishkin & Serletis, The Economics of Money, Banking, and Financial Markets, 8th Canadian ed. (Pearson) - required; a legally obtained print or second-hand copy is fine, MyLab is not needed. In
Textbook/. - Slides, notes, reading guide, practice questions and quizzes on MyLS.
- Basic non-programmable calculator for the exams.
Topics
The syllabus gives an order, not dates ("an approximate reading guide will be posted in MyLS"). The class notes carry a tentative topic each, in this order, mapped to the textbook - the MyLS reading guide wins whenever it disagrees.
| # | Topic | Mishkin & Serletis |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | Ch. 1 |
| 2 | The Canadian financial system, markets and instruments | Ch. 2 |
| 3 | The role of money and the Canadian payment system | Ch. 3 |
| 4 | The determination of interest rates | Ch. 4, 5 |
| 5 | The risk and term structure of interest rates | Ch. 6 |
| - | Midterm - Thu Oct 8 | |
| 6 | Rational expectations and efficient financial markets | Ch. 7 |
| 7 | Financial intermediation and asymmetric information | Ch. 8 |
| 8 | Financial crises | Ch. 11 |
| 9 | Central banks and the Bank of Canada | Ch. 14 |
| 10 | The money supply process | Ch. 15 |
| 11 | Conventional and unconventional monetary policy | Ch. 16, 17 |
| 12 | The foreign exchange market | Ch. 18 |
Tentative per the syllabus - "the order, selection, and depth of coverage may be modified as circumstances require."