A sample lecture of professor candidate

Mount Royal University had a series of sample lectures to hire a new economics professor. Some of them were really terrible. Especially the last one. The candidate did not lecture; he presented a research, which would not be really great even as a undergraduate student's. His so-called 'lecture' was about BOC's monetary policy framework based on Mishikin's textbook. He started his lecture by denouncing NGDP targeting. According to him, NGDP targeting is just crazy. I don't mind if a professor has a certain opinion on different policy options as a human being; however, a professor's job in class is not to promote his own ideas but to teach theories and research methods regarding students's learning subjects. A great prof should teach student alternative theories and compare them without prejudice. A normal prof would simply stick with textbook descriptions rather than bringing forward his opinion. This person did not even clearly explain why some economists are critical of inflation targeting. Mishikin's textbook at least introduces those criticisms while also providing counter-criticisms. To this candidate, the inflation targeting just has no problem and is fine. After his teaching demo, I asked his opinion some economists argue inflation targeting may not work at zlb. His response was simply those economists do not understand expectation channel and took an example of Evans's rule. Come on, dude. The Fed does not have an inflation targeting officially. It is wrong to compare the Fed to another central bank with officially inflation target. Evans rule shows the inflation targeting is not enough. The Fed has to show that it will be committed to another target as well to effectively influence expectation. It shows the weakness of inflation targeting not its strength. To him, Mark Carney mentioning NGDPT or Mankiw and Feldstein simulating NGDPT and finding favourable results in the early 1990s already really does not matter. As a student, I want to learn from a prof general ideas about central banking and monetary policy that I will use for my research in the future. However, this person indeed disappointed me.