Students search this code expecting an assignment guide, and the first useful thing to say is that Money and Finance at Macquarie has historically put most of its weight on a test and a final exam rather than on written coursework.
Students search this code expecting an assignment guide, and the first useful thing to say is that Money and Finance at Macquarie has historically put most of its weight on a test and a final exam rather than on written coursework. That changes what preparation means. Reading widely and writing well still matter, because the unit's own outcomes ask you to critique academic literature, but you will be asked to demonstrate that under a clock. Below is how MAAS mentors approach a unit with that shape, along with a warning about the code itself that costs students real time.
Author: MAAS Editorial Team · Reviewed by a Senior Economics and Finance mentor (PhD, Economics)
Last updated: 2026-08-10
Category: writing-tips
First, are you sure you have the right ECON2050?
Direct answer: Check the university before you read another word of anything. At Macquarie University, ECON2050 is Money and Finance, a 10-credit-point unit in Macquarie Business School. At the University of Queensland, the same code is a mathematical economics unit covering multivariate optimisation, constrained optimisation and dynamic optimisation in discrete time. These are not variations on one subject. They share nothing but five characters.
Evidence: Both universities publish the code openly, Macquarie in its course handbook and unit guides, Queensland in its course profiles. Course codes are internal to each institution, so collisions like this are ordinary rather than rare, and search results mix them freely.
Example: One evening was lost working through optimisation problems she had found under her own unit code before noticing that the material assumed a calculus background her unit never mentioned. Nothing was wrong with the material. It belonged to a different university.
This guide covers the Macquarie unit. If your handbook describes Lagrange multipliers rather than yield curves, you are on the wrong page, and the same caution applies to any study notes you find circulating under this code.
What does the Macquarie unit actually cover?
Direct answer: The unit traces money and finance historically and treats financial innovation as a force that shaped the modern world, rather than presenting markets as a fixed system to memorise. Published unit material describes topics spanning the nature of money, interest rate determination and the yield curve, central banking and monetary authorities, behavioural finance and cryptocurrencies, and analysis of money, bond, equity and derivatives markets. Entry is gated by an introductory economics, actuarial or finance unit.
Evidence: These details come from the university's own handbook entry and published unit guide, which record the credit points, the prerequisite chain and the unit description. Note that unit guides are published per session and change between offerings, so the version governing your marks is the one on your own iLearn site.
Example: Expecting a markets-and-instruments unit, one student was surprised by how much of the lecture material was historical. The history was not context around the content. The argument that innovation in finance mattered as much as innovation in technology was the content, and it recurred in questions asking him to explain why an instrument emerged when it did.
What is the practical consequence of an exam-weighted structure?
Direct answer: Your study method has to produce recall and reasoning speed, not just understanding. A student who can explain the yield curve after twenty minutes with their notes will not perform in a setting where the same explanation is needed in five minutes without them.
| Assessment shape | What it rewards | What preparation should look like |
|---|---|---|
| Group presentation | Collaborative analysis of a real scenario, delivered clearly | Rehearsing the argument aloud, agreeing who owns which claim, timing the delivery |
| Mid-session test | Fast, accurate recall of core mechanics | Retrieval practice from blank paper, not re-reading highlighted notes |
| Final exam, heaviest component | Applying concepts to unseen situations under time pressure | Working past papers to a clock, then diagnosing why marks were lost |
Evidence: The weightings above reflect one published offering and are indicative rather than fixed, so confirm yours. On method, the underlying finding is robust: retrieval practice, meaning testing yourself, produces substantially better long-term retention than repeated study of the same material, even though students consistently judge re-reading to feel more effective (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). Spacing that practice out compounds the effect (Dunlosky et al., 2013). The unit's own late-submission rules also reward planning, since written work loses a percentage of the total mark for each day it is late up to a cut-off, after which no marks remain to be earned.
Example: A student who had never failed an assignment struggled with the mid-session test and concluded he was bad at exams. His study log showed six hours of re-reading and no self-testing. Two weeks of closed-book practice questions changed the result without changing how much he studied.
How do you satisfy an outcome about critiquing literature in a unit like this?
Direct answer: By treating explanations as contestable rather than settled. The unit's stated outcomes include critiquing academic literature and examining alternative ways of thinking about financial markets, which means the expected answer is rarely a single mechanism recited correctly.
Evidence: Money and finance is a field where the standard account has repeatedly been revised, which is precisely why the outcome is worded that way. Behavioural finance exists because observed market behaviour did not match what fully rational models predicted, and the debate about how far that undermines market efficiency is live rather than resolved (Shiller, 2003). A student who can state where two explanations disagree, and what evidence would settle it, is demonstrating the outcome. A student who recites one explanation is demonstrating recall.
Example: Asked why an asset price moved, one answer described the mechanism cleanly and stopped. The stronger version named the same mechanism, noted that a behavioural account would attribute part of the movement to sentiment rather than fundamentals, and identified what evidence would distinguish the two. Same knowledge, visibly more judgement.
Where do Vietnamese students most often lose marks here?
Direct answer: On the presentation component and on exam questions that ask why rather than what. Both reward speaking or writing an argument under pressure, which is a different skill from understanding the material, and it is the skill least likely to have been practised before arriving.
Evidence: The presentation task in the published offering is a group video in which every member must present a part, so there is no quiet role available. That design is deliberate and it is common across Australian business units.
Example: Understanding monetary policy well, one student still recorded a segment that read almost entirely from a script. The content was correct and the delivery cost marks, because the criteria rewarded explanation rather than recitation. Preparing three points he could speak to without notes produced a shorter segment and a better mark.
A note on terminology: learn the English terms rather than translating them privately into Vietnamese. Yield curve, liquidity, and monetary base carry technical meanings that everyday translation blurs, and under exam pressure a blurred term produces a blurred answer.
What should a study plan look like across the session?
Direct answer: Front-load conceptual understanding, then convert it into retrieval practice early enough that the test tells you something useful rather than simply confirming a problem too late to fix.
A pattern that works: in the opening weeks, build the vocabulary and the core mechanisms, writing your own one-page explanation of each rather than annotating slides. Around the presentation, practise speaking the argument, since that is transferable to the exam. After the test, spend an hour diagnosing every lost mark by cause, separating what you did not know from what you knew but could not retrieve in time. In the final weeks, work past papers under exam conditions rather than reviewing notes.
Evidence: The diagnostic step after the test carries more value than its cost suggests, because the two failure causes have opposite remedies. Not knowing requires study; knowing but not retrieving requires practice. Students who do not separate them usually respond by re-reading, which addresses only the first.
What do MAAS mentors actually do on a unit like this?
MAAS works as an academic advisor. On an exam-weighted unit, the useful work is different from essay coaching. A mentor helps you check your understanding of a mechanism by asking you to explain it without notes, reviews your presentation argument before you record it, and goes through your test paper with you to separate knowledge gaps from retrieval failures. You do your own studying and sit your own assessments. Where written work is involved, the same read applies as on any unit, with referencing checked inside it.
Frequently asked questions
Which university does this guide describe?
Macquarie University, where ECON2050 is Money and Finance, a 10-credit-point unit in Macquarie Business School. The same code at the University of Queensland is a mathematical economics unit and is unrelated.
What are the prerequisites?
Published unit material lists an introductory economics, actuarial studies or finance unit as the entry requirement, with several accepted alternatives. Confirm against your own enrolment, since prerequisite lists are revised.
How is it assessed?
One published offering used a group presentation, a mid-session test and a final exam, with the exam carrying the largest single weighting. Weightings and task types vary between sessions, so your current unit guide is the authority.
Is there much writing?
The unit's outcomes include writing professionally proficient short discussion pieces, so writing is assessed, but a large share of the marks in a typical offering sits in timed conditions. Prepare for both.
Do I need strong maths?
For the Macquarie unit, no advanced mathematics is assumed beyond what the prerequisite units cover. If your syllabus is full of constrained optimisation, you are enrolled in a different university's ECON2050.
What happens if I submit written work late?
Published unit rules apply a percentage penalty of the total possible mark for each day late, up to a cut-off after which no marks are available. Check your own unit guide for the current figures and for the special consideration process.
Related reading
- How to revise for final exams effectively
- ECON1003: financial institutions and markets
- Exam support from MAAS mentors
Talk to a MAAS mentor about your unit
References
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
Mishkin, F. S. (2022). The economics of money, banking and financial markets (13th ed.). Pearson.
Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
Shiller, R. J. (2003). From efficient markets theory to behavioral finance. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(1), 83–104. https://doi.org/10.1257/089533003321164967