ECON 4220

While I agree with the other reviews, I wanted to add my perspective. The professor tends to be monotone and moves through the material very quickly—he’ll write something important and then immediately scroll down to start a new section, which makes it easy to miss key points. Although he does post his notes on Canvas, they could be better organized and posted earlier. The problem sets are fair, and attending office hours can be really helpful in doing well.

If I were to do things differently, I’d focus on doing really well on the midterm. That way, you can max out the four problem sets (which isn’t too hard) and avoid the final exam altogether, though it does come with a 10-point deduction from your final grade. The grading scale is actually a bit more generous, so the deduction isn’t as harsh as it sounds, and it could be a good strategy if you want to finish the class by early October. The material gets tougher as the semester goes on, and there’s a lot more to memorize for the final.

Sometimes I wish there was a textbook because the iPad notes he uploads are often in shorthand and can be hard to follow without extra context. More explanations would be helpful. Overall, it’s a lot of material and can feel dry, but if you stay on top of it and focus on lecture content, you’ll probably manage just fine.

I enjoyed this class for the most part, and as far as 4000-level economics classes go, it's not super difficult to do well. If you show up to lectures, actually pay attention, and take good notes you will do well in this class. Wincoop is super fair as homework questions actually look like the stuff you learn in lectures, and exams actually look like homework questions. If you can confidently do homework problems, you should have no problems with the exams. Wincoop was always willing to help with homework in office hours - I HIGHLY recommend you go to these because he will walk through a lot of the problems! Overall this was a manageable and interesting course.

Van Wincoop has been teaching this course for many years now and he is clearly an expert in the field. Every lecture is fascinating, especially when Van Wincoop is talking about various currency crises and how he "got called in to help" back in the 90s for some of them. This is one of the most "fair" classes I have taken at UVA. There are no readings or weekly assignments, just 4 problem sets (he drops one), a midterm, and a final. I took it when the course was offered online asynchronously, so the exams were open book/open note. I'm sure this made the course much easier, since I found myself pretty much just copying down my notes for both exams, so take that into consideration if you're taking this course in person.

If you're looking for a low maintenance economics elective, this course will not disappoint.