5/1
Final Exam Information
[The following was also sent out as an email on 5/1.]
We have a final exam on Tuesday, May 5th, from 8:00 to 11:00. Nothing has changed from what I announced in class, but here is a bit more detail and advice.
The exam will only cover material from the 25 in-class presentations. The exam will comprise 75 multiple choice questions, all to be delivered online. At 8:00 on May 5th I will post a link to the exam on the class website; at about the same time I will email the link to you. The exam will be open for you to complete until 11:00.
I will host a Zoom meeting during the exam and will monitor the meeting in case you have questions. During the exam, please send me a private chat message if you have a question. I also will be watching my email for questions. A link to the Zoom meeting will be posted on the class website and I will send out the link in an email the morning of the exam.
Now here’s the advice. The questions all relate to the presentations in class and your source materials for the exam are the slides from the presentations. All 25 slide decks are available from the class web site. To study for the exam, I recommend that you review the slides. Further, I recommend that you download the 25 presentations prior to the exam so that they are on your computer and available to you quickly. Unless you have a fast internet connection, I think you will find it frustrating to download the files during the exam. But this is only advice. (Also, since the slides are the source material for the exam, the correct answers will be determined by what is on the slides — even if you find conflicting information elsewhere.)
Good luck on the exam. Let me know if you have questions.
Wally Thurman
4/23
Finish line details
As of today, two grading opportunities remain: your final project paper and the final exam.
- Final Project
- A 10-20 page paper is due by close of business on Monday 4/27. You should email me two files, one in Word format and the other in pdf. Please name your files, for example, ‘Brussels Sprouts – Garcia and Weir.docx’ and ‘Brussels Sprouts – Garcia and Weir.pdf’
- The paper should be a text version of your presentation, updated with anything new that has gone on since you gave your presentation and giving necessary detail so that it is self contained (i.e., don’t assume that the reader of your paper has seen your presentation.) Important graphics are appropriate. Grammar and diction count.
- Final Exam – Tuesday, May 5th from 8:00 to 11:00
- The exam will be administered in a Zoom session, for which I will send you a link. The subject of the exam will be all of the presentations we’ve heard.
- During the exam you can access the presentation slides, which are posted on the website, but collaboration with other students is not permissible.
4/21
WSJ article on negative oil prices (from 4/21 print edition)
4/17
Read for Saturday’s class: from the 4/1 WSJ, an interesting article on lumber futures prices and hedging. (A pdf of the same article can be found here.)
And, at the risk of your thinking I am secretly a crazy cat lady, an entirely optional video with words of wisdom can be found here.
3/4
FCOJ stands for Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice. FCOJ futures are sold on the Intercontinental Exchange in New York. Check out prices and production specifications.
2/25
An article on healthy fats from the 2/26/19 WSJ. This is the article I handed out in class and asked you to be ready to analyze economically in the upcoming midterm.
2/24
Browse the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) corn futures contracts. The CBOT is owned by CME group (the Chicago Mercantile Exchange). Here’s a link.
Read (or watch and listen to) the CME online tutorial: Introduction to Futures.
2/12
Explore the history of the exchange rate between the Australian dollar and the U.S. dollar.
2/11
Homework 2 is due in class on Tuesday, February 18th.
1/30
Read Russell Roberts’s essay on the benefits of trade.
1/28
Teams, project topics, and presentation dates can be found here. This schedule has been updated — see the “Presentations” tab of the web site. (3/4)
1/15
Projects begin: find your project teammate here (revised on 1/21). Each team should email me with three ranked choices of project topics, by Tuesday, January 21st.
1/13
On Friday, January 10th the USDA released its World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates (or WASDE).
1/4
Subscribe to the Wall Street Journal at the student rate:
Note: Professor Thurman recommends that you choose the subscription option that includes both digital access and daily delivery of the physical paper. Students from previous years have found navigating the class easier with the physical paper.