Don't let these decade-old negative reviews fool you! Harrigan's econometrics class is absolutely fantastic (among the best I've taken so far) and he's a phenomenal instructor.

Lecture is organized and concise, with printed slides being provided for notetaking purposes. Homework is assigned at the end of lecture Thursday and is due by the start of class on Tuesday, taking a few hours to complete on average.

Much of the rumored difficulty of Harrigan's class is explained by the fact that his lectures go deeper than those of other professors (at least based on what I've heard from friends in Rudiger and Farmer's class). In other words, Harrigan's lectures spend a lot of time discussing the math and intuition behind the material. While this did result a bit more effort required to take everything it, I found that I understood all the core material to a strikingly high degree, an undoubtably worthwhile trade-off.

As a lecturer, Harrigan is calm, intelligent, and nerdy in a good way. He's great at answering questions and is clearly well-versed in the material he teaches. What I particularly love about his lectures is the use of real-world examples and data, making it much easier to understand how the statistical methods we learn work in practice.

Using the program Stata is a requirement for this course, which costs around $49 for 6 months of use. Sometimes, you'll need to learn Stata code on your own for homework, but code from lecture examples is usually available to guide you.

The exams (two checkpoints and a final) are rather tricky, but you're allowed to bring in a sheet of notes (two sheets for the final) to assist you. Most of the questions can be answered just by having all the relevant lecture/textbook info on your sheet, while other questions require a bit more thinking (for example, "How would you design this experiment?")

My only real complaint about this course is that there's a final exam rather than a final project. Not only would this be useful for the ol' resume, but also for bringing more of the material to life.

Overall, taking econometrics with Harrigan is a sound decision and you'll come out of this class as a smarter, more inspired individual. Again, don't fear the bad reviews! This class is new, improved, and infinitely more than a backup option to Rudiger/Farmer

I took it during his first time teaching the course in 10 years. Dramatic improvement over what the other reviews say. There were only 15 people in a 50 person lecture and he knew everyone's names. Each class he would print out the slides and give copies to each student for note taking. Lectures were clear and informative. Tests and finals were mostly conceptual and were easier than homeworks.

Stata is required for the homeworks which he will not teach you. Sometimes the TA would provide the code for the homework during discussions but this was not often; Claude was almost a requirement to learn new code, but by the end you knew your way around. Homeworks were the hardest part but grading was relatively leinient, I lost points for handwriting quality.

Harrigan is the best professor for ECON 3720 in 2026, definitely the least work compared to Ruedinger and Framer. Knowing every concept and having it on your crib sheet will get you a B MINIMUM.

The hardest content of any class I have taken. Good professor, although grading is difficult. Problem sets not very well aligned with tests. You get to have a cheat sheet for exams, I would recommend putting down all formulas and intuitions for everything you need to know. Just try to cram as much of the content in as possible. Lectures are well organized but the content is difficult, so it may take you some time to reflect on lecture and understand the content. He almost exclusively uses slides, which is sometimes detrimental to understanding the math, but is great for reviewing all the content and putting it on your cheat sheet. Read the book. Haruka was a very helpful TA.

This is a VERY challenging course but you can come out of it having learned a lot. Harrigan is a tough teacher but he does a good job explaining complicated statistics. The tests are really hard but he curves everything to a B average. There isn't really a lot of economics material, it's just statistics applied to economic situations. You use a program called STATA that can be difficult to figure out but Harrigan's powerpoints and the TAs are very helpful with learning how to use it. It's a very difficult class but while doing the final project at the end of the course there were several times where I actually enjoyed what I was doing, and the feeling of pride in what I had accomplished afterwards was priceless.

I highly recommend this class if you want to despise your semester/life. Otherwise, DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. He never uses examples in class (his slides are nothing but formulas, and he doesn't show how to use them), tests are blood baths, and the final project has no guidelines. You do not learn how to actually use STATA in this class (all you learn is how to copy his, which leaves you helpless for the empirical project), and what he teaches is all theoretical. Basically, no part of this class will be useful in the future. At this point, I am hoping just for a passing grade. Is this an econ based class? No. Is this a stat/math based class? No. Is this all theory and then he expects you to figure out how to apply it? Yes.
If you need to take this class, take it with another teacher.

I know a lot of people in class didn't like Harrigan, and he isn't the friendliest guy in the world, but if you go to his office hours, he's very very helpful. Knows the material, willing to offer help in a way that challenges you intellectually and really help you answer questions yourself. He does make the class a little harder than it should be. There's a final project thats 30% of your whole grade. Harrigan really didn't give any instructions, so it was pretty much all trial and error on stata, but if you put enough time into it and can somehow prove that in your paper, the project can actually help you with your grade.
Overall, difficult but worthwhile class. If you're an econ major and have to take 372, take it with harrigan.

He really knows what he's talking about. This class was such a pain but I learend a lot. Probably going away with a mediocre grade at best, but I feel like I've learned a lot.

James Harrigan is a phenomenal teacher, but he makes this class much harder than it needs to be. However, it is incredibly useful if you are thinking of doing the finance concentration; his teaching makes 4720 easier.

This was the worst class of my semester. He assigns an "Empirical Project" with little to no direction and then proceeds to grade harshly. Homework was strictly graded with little to no partial credit given. The midterms were fair enough, but Harrigan teaches this course like a grad school level. I would go a different route.

Edit: Everything I've learned in this class has been relevant for most if not all of my classes. Even though this class was VERY time consuming, the material you learn from it is very very useful.

If you have to take ECON3720, Harrigan should be the last professor you wanna have. He's strict and cold. The class is extremely hard. Very theoretical. If you're taking his class, you'll find your friends in other sessions have a far easier life than you do. If you're looking for frustration, his class is your best choice