School of Economics
Take home assignment, Summer Semester 2024
ECON3210 Financial Markets and Institutions
The take home assignment is an open book, unsupervised, untimed Blackboard test available in Blackboard under Assessment in the folder Take Home Assignment.
The link will become available on Friday 13rd December 2024 10:00am and the submission date is Monday 16th December 2024 10:00 am.
Be aware that rigorous and demanding marking standards apply. To get full mark, the answer must define concepts, show all the steps of calculation, provide precise and consistent explanations, be well written and well presented.
Topics to revise:
Topic 0 Money, balance sheet in action, shares and bonds
Topic 1 The lifecycle of a financial instrument in flow of funds diagram and balance sheets Topic 2 Payment system; Banks' balance sheet specifics
Topic 3 Funding of the economy through direct finance, financial intermediation and net creation of private money
Exam Conditions:
There is no timer for this test. You can take the test over several days in separate working sessions. Save (but not submit yet) when you finish a working session so your answers are there when you click again on the same link at your next session; if you accidently submit there is no possibility to reconnect to the test.
It is an open book unsupervised assignment. It is an individual assessment. Collaboration is NOT permitted.
The files to upload require hand-written answers; all diagrams, balance sheet and/or equations as well as your full name and student number at the top of the answer absolutely need to be hand-written. Ipads can be used to produce hand-written answers. You are allowed to type the part of the answers that is only text.
Scan your exam answers for a given question, merge them if there are more than one page for the answer and upload them as one pdf document per question. Sending files by email is NOT permitted.
Materials you need:
Several sheets of paper, if possible without lines, to write your official answer.
Rough paper to draft your answers before you copy it on the actual paper you will upload
A black pen and possibly blue and red pens for your flow of fund diagrams (avoid using pencil on your official answer as not easy to read)
A calculator.
A device to take picture of your handwritten answers and convert them into a pdf file. You can also include your pictures into a word document and convert it to a pdf file.
If you do not have access to a flatbed scanner, you can use a phone app such as “Adobe Scan” or “Microsoft Office Lens” .
You can also answer with an ipad and create a pdf directly from the ipad.
Resources to study:
All resources available on the course Bb and UQ Extend platform (self study, tutorial, workshop and further training) and in the assessment folder (revision online quiz on topic 0, 1 2 and 3). It is not recommended to use external resources that have not been validated by the course coordinator as they may be conflicting the approach we take in the course.
Weight in the final mark:
The take home assignment #1 is 20% of the final mark. It is marked out of 40 marks in total meaning that we will need to divide the result by 2 when calculating the final grade.
Structure of the assignment:
The first take home assignment content is worth 40 marks (we will divide the result by 2 when calculating the course final mark).
Part A 10 marks. Answer 10 Multiple Choice Answer Questions
Part B 20 marks. Solve 2 problems B1 and B2.
Upload a pdf file of your hand-written answers for each
Part C 10 marks. Answer 2 questions. C1 is a true-false-unclear statement to justify in details; C2 is a critical thinking question, on an unseen context, often supported by an article.
See the expectations and the marking standards at the end of the document.
Late submission and Extensions:
A penalty of 4 marks (10% of total) will be deducted per day for up to 7 calendar days, at which point any submission will not receive any marks unless an extension has been approved. Each 24 hour block is recorded from the time the submission is due.
There is NO deferred option. Extensions will not exceed 7 days in any case and will require solid objective evidence.
Requests for the granting of extensions must be made online via
https://my.uq.edu.au/information-and-services/manage-my-program/exams-and- assessment/applying-extension?p=2#2
with supporting documentation before the submission date and time. [If you wait the last minute to apply you may find out that the application was rejected and you will incur penalties for late submission.] Requests by email to the course coordinator are NOT valid. It is a good idea, however, to notify your lecturer to the course email [email protected]that you have lodged a request.
Other penalties:
Entirely typed uploaded answers will incur a penalty of 30% of the marks for the question on the ground that the marker cannot check authorship; balance sheets and diagrams that are not hand- written will incur a penalty of 10% of the marks allocated to them.
Please do NOT upload word document or pictures format. A penalty of 10% of the marks for the question will apply for each file that has not a pdf format.
Please do NOT merge all your answers for all questions in one single pdf. A penalty of 10% of the marks for the question will apply for each file that merges answers of several questions.
If files are missing or if they are the wrong ones when you submit then you will get 0 mark for the question. Files sent by emails will be ignored. Submit late rather than sending files by email.
You will lose marks for some good parts of your answer if other parts of the answer contradict or are inconsistent with your good explanations and/or give evidence that you had actually not understood the question.
Misconduct procedures will take place and penalties decided by the Integrity team will apply if you are caught collaborating with others, regardless of whether you are the student helping someone else or the student receiving help. It is also inacceptable to use companies that sell answers. Googling the questions or using AI is not permitted; your answers are expected to reflect the contents of the course not the contents resulting from a google search or ChatGPT request.
Technical issues:
It is your responsibility to take the assignment in a location where the Internet is stable (check regularly that you are still connected) and have a plan B available if your Internet fails (like having arranged with a neighbour to use their internet in case of emergency). If you have any doubt, change location (go to UQ campus for instance); provided you have not submitted you will be able to reconnect to your test.
If the system does not want to save your answers, (you receive a message of error that it does not save) you need to shut down completely your computer (DO NOT SUBMIT THE TEST YET) and reconnect to your test that will still be running. After checking that all the answers are saved and that the files are uploaded, you can use the remaining time, if any left, to check your Mcq and your answers located in answer boxes. It is highly recommended that during the last 15 minutes of the test you do NOT touch the files uploaded.
For technical help contact AskUs preferably by chat during business hours; the service closes at 5pm on Saturday and Sunday and reopens at 8am on Monday.
https://web.library.uq.edu.au/contact-us
Expectations and marking standards:
PART A
Each question is worth 1marks. (10 Marks Total)
10 MCQ, covering topic 0 to 3
Same nature and level of difficulty as questions in practice online tests.
Only one answer is correct. Choose the answer that is correct in most cases. Disregard
answers that would be true only under very specific circumstances that were not specified in the question.
Be aware of the occasional presence of NOT correct in the question! If you find more than one correct answer, check if you have not overlooked a NOT correct in the question.
PART B
Answer each question in a separate paper that you upload as pdf, as indicated for each question. Marks are as indicated. (20 Marks Total)
2 problems covering topics 0 to 3 (B1 and B2)
Questions have several subquestions and can mix up topics.
Same nature and level of difficulty as problems seen in tutorials and workshops.
The questions are different from the ones in the tutorials. Be careful not to be too
mechanical in answering the exercises. Personal abbreviations that were not used in the learning resources are not accepted.
You are expected to define the concepts you use, provide formula before plugging
numbers, show the details and ALL steps of your calculations, make explicit the
reasoning you follow and interpret your result. Make sure that the interpretations are
not simply a repetition of the result. This is part of good writing standards and evidence of a deep level of understanding as opposed to mechanical study.
If you are afraid to be short of time or to be short of energy (more likely in a no-timer
assessment), write short answers first and leave some space to add definitions, explanations and interpretations later when you have some time/energy left.
Warning: consistency with previous mistakes will not always be rewarded (especially if they take you back too close to existing model answers of problems in UQ Extend).
PART C
Answer questions in separate paper to upload as pdf file, as indicated. Marks are as indicated. (10 Marks Total)
This part of the exam puts a strong emphasis on critical thinking, ability to apply knowledge to new contexts, the depth of understanding and quality of writing.
Your answer must be well presented, with logical links between sentences. Messy
answers and argumentation with parts presented in a wrong order or repetitive will be penalised. Be precise. Define the key concepts involved in the question. Vague
explanations will not gain full mark. Refrain from writing on aspects not relevant to the question. Off topic components are evidence that the question was not fully
understood and therefore will be penalised. You may not get marks for some good
explanations if other parts of the answer contradict them and/or give evidence that you had actually not understood at all the key concepts. Therefore, do not gamble: only
write information that you are convinced is correct. You should avoid google or other search engine as well as AI it is likely that the information you will find will not be
precise enough for the course and/or fall in the trap of the misconception that the
course precisely tries to debunk. Copying/paste slides contents is not acceptable as
this does not give evidence that you have understood the content. Refrain using contents from your other courses as markers will look for answers reflecting
exclusively what has been covered in this course.
1 question (C1) to discuss 1 statement covering topics 1 to 3. (3 marks)
You need to conclude whether a statement is true (always correct with no further
condition/restriction) false (always incorrect given the case provided) or unclear (could be
correct under certain circumstances to be defined and incorrect under other circumstances to be defined).
You then need to justify your answer in four to six explanatory sentences. Without an
explanation or with a completely unrelated explanation you will get 0 marks even if your
conclusion true false or unclear was correct. Be careful that unclear means that if it true in
some circumstances that need to be defined in your answer and false in other circumstances that also need to be defined in your answer; one cannot get marks for unclear by simply
saying that the question was incomplete or badly written!
1 question (C2) of critical thinking not covered in the learning resources related to topics 1 to 3. (7 marks)
The question applies the concepts studied in the course in an unseen context. It could take the form. of interpreting and commenting an extract from an article or some new data.
Part C is really the discriminatory part of the exam (with the explanations and interpretations given in B too) therefore students aiming for a 7 need to perform. well on this part. It is easier to secure marks in Part A and B than in Part C.