Affiliated Departments & Programs

Will Melick joined Kenyon in 1998 and teaches macroeconomics, money and financial markets, and econometrics. He has led seminars on the Global Financial Crisis, the economics of oil and gas, and sovereign debt. Melick researches the recovery of expectations from options markets, including applications to crude oil during the Gulf War, the impact of central bank intervention in foreign exchange markets and the response of the federal funds rate to monetary policy pronouncements.

Melick spent the 2001–2002 academic year as senior international economist at the President's Council of Economic Advisers and was a research associate with the Cleveland Fed for ten years. Prior to Kenyon, Melick was a Federal Reserve Board research economist for eleven years, spending one year at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.

Areas of Expertise

Financial economics, monetary economics, econometrics

Education

1987 — Doctor of Philosophy from The Ohio State University

1984 — Master of Arts from The Ohio State University

1982 — Bachelor of Science from Indiana Univ Bloomington

Courses Recently Taught

This course studies national economic performance. Building upon the microeconomic theories of consumer and producer behavior developed in ECON 101, the course introduces models that focus on the questions of unemployment, inflation and growth. Topics covered include measurement of national income and inflation, macroeconomic models, saving and investment, money and banking, fiscal and monetary policy, and international trade and finance. This course is required for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101. Offered every spring semester.

This course is a theoretical and applied study of the level of national income and employment. Prices, interest rates, unemployment rates, international trade relations, business cycles and the long-run growth of income significantly affect our standards of living. Diverse schools of macroeconomic thought are distinguished by theoretical concepts, priorities in performance goals, and empirical evidence. The course considers a variety of approaches and emphasizes the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic theory. Government actively manages both domestic and international aspects of the macroeconomy, and the course considers current public policy issues. This course cannot be taken as pass/D/fail. This course is required for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101 and ECON 102, and a college level calculus course or a score of 4 or 5 on the AP calculus exam. Offered every spring semester.

Econometrics is the application of statistical techniques to test economic models. This course offers an introduction to the theoretical and practical aspects of econometrics. Emphasis is given to linear regression techniques, special problems associated with linear regression, and the interpretation of results. In short, economic explanations of behavior are quantified and hypotheses are tested with data using statistical techniques. Students make extensive use of Stata, a statistical software package that is popular among economists, to create and modify data sets and obtain experience learning to apply appropriate econometric methods. This course cannot be taken as pass/D/fail. This course is required for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101, 102 and a college course in statistics or a score of 4 or 5 on the AP statistics exam. Generally offered every semester.

This course examines U.S. money and financial markets and their interaction with and influence on prices, real output, employment and international trade. After an extensive discussion of fixed income pricing and the term structure, we consider the operations of financial institutions and the Federal Reserve System. The implementation of monetary policy and its effect on domestic and foreign financial markets, real output and foreign trade also are examined. In addition, alternative domestic and international monetary arrangements are considered. While completing assignments, students make fairly heavy use of a spreadsheet program such as Excel. This course counts toward an elective for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101 and 102. Generally offered every year.

This course is an introduction to both the theoretical and practical aspects of the financial derivatives named futures and options. Markets for these instruments have grown rapidly over the past 40 years and are an important part of the global financial system. We begin with the study of market terminology and structure. We then turn to the pricing of forwards and futures. The majority of the course is spent on option pricing. We use the binomial model to motivate a careful derivation and discuss the Black-Scholes pricing equation. Throughout the course, we pay careful attention to the relationships among derivative prices, market participants, risk preferences and expectations for future realizations of the prices of underlying assets. Students likely make extensive use of a spreadsheet program such as Excel. This course counts toward an elective for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101 and 102. Offered occasionally.

This seminar considers the markets for petroleum products from a variety of perspectives. Analyses of these markets have ranged from microeconomic investigations of the pricing of key products such as crude oil to macroeconomic considerations of the role of energy prices in generating economic booms and busts. The seminar uses models from microeconomics, macroeconomics and finance to study the pricing of energy products and the role played by these products in economic development. Throughout the seminar, attention also is paid to historical and political developments related to the economics of oil and gas. As part of the seminar, each student prepares and presents to the class an independent research paper. This counts toward the seminar requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ECON 101 and 102. Generally offered every three years.