ECON 4150

Kind professor? Yes.
Knowledgeable professor? Yes.
Professor who can effectively convey that knowledge to students? Yes.
Interesting content? Yes.

Great class to fulfill the 4000-level Econ elective, really glad I took it. Professor Harrington is clearly passionate about the material and is more interested in her students actually understanding the content than in making exams/assignments difficult (first exam average was a 95, second one got a little harder at around an 85 average). The name of the course is pretty self-explanatory, and content focuses mainly on how labor markets differ from traditional goods markets. A lot of time is spent on amenities and disamenities that encompass both pecuniary (money) and non-pecuniary (not money) parts of workplaces. The material is very current - Professor Harrington discusses research that she's doing right now, and lots of the studies we read were written in the last 5 years (obviously there's also papers from the 90s, but those still felt relevant) and were mostly interesting. You'll need to be brushed up on econometrics and intermediate micro as a lot of the class involves potential outcomes frameworks, indifference curves, and all of that stuff. Lots of graphs - what's cool is that a lot of them go beyond a simple supply/demand framework and bring in things like the wages required to encourage workers to work hard rather than shirk. She also brought in a really senior HR/compensation person from a large company to talk to us about what compensation looks like from the employer side, and that was a really informative conversation that I'm grateful to have had.

Grading is split as follows: 20% on each of two exams (no final), 15% on a group survey project, 20% on a written memo, 15% on homework assignments (4 total with the lowest dropped) and in-class quizzes/problems (lowest 2 dropped). Exams aren't bad, particularly if you study and take the practice exams. Survey is cool and you get to spearhead a lot of your own work. Memo involves interviewing someone you know about personnel policies at their job and writing about some ways that they could be improved. The homeworks use R, but you're more or less given the code you need to use and can ask questions if you can't figure it out. Group survey involves looking at data from surveys made in class about non-pecuniary job amenities. In-class quizzes/problems aren't terribly difficult as long as you do the readings. At time of writing, I have close to a 98%, with a little less than 22% of my final grade still up for grabs.

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