ECON 4020

This is a pretty niche Econ elective, but it is super super interesting. Prof. Aryal is very very accommodating; he prefers all of the coding done in the class to be in MATLAB, but will literally walk you through how to do everything needed if you are stuck – it's just a matter of going to office hours and emailing him. There are no exams in this class, and the vast majority of your grade is writing a journal-style econ paper with your group mates. The rest of the grade is three presentations; overall Aryal is a pretty lenient grader if it is clear you are putting in the work. Further, he allows students to send him drafts of paper sections and presentation slides for him to look over and provide brief feedback on before you submit/present. This really helps to make sure you are staying on track and not getting totally lost. How might you get lost you may be wondering: the course content itself is quite complicated and difficult to understand. There is no textbook for the class because there is not a great text for teaching undergraduate Auction Theory. The good thing is that the Aryal provides very detailed lecture slides with all of the equations and variable definitions you need to use when writing your paper, but he expects you to be able to work your way through the derivations and thoroughly understand the material. The workload ebbs and flows; there is a heavier load when a section og the paper is due or before a presentation, but otherwise there is not much outside work. Professor Aryal also bought the whole class lunch a couple of times instead of us having lecture which was cool. Lastly, the paper is expected to be written using LateX, so there is a bit of a learning curve with navigating that platform, but there is nothing a quick google search cannot help you with as far as syntax goes (LateX essentially allows you to "code" a PDF). Overall, this class is super interesting, actually applicable to the real world, and is not excessively difficult to do well in. #tCFfall2021

This class deserves and updated review. The course is now structured around a semester long team (2 person) project that involves creating a final research paper that explains both theoretical concepts as well as their implementation on a data set of auctions. Although this course does not require a programming prerequisite such as CS or STAT intro classes, I would NOT recommend taking it if you have no experience in either Python, R or Matlab. That being said, if you are relatively comfortable with coding with respect to visualizations, writing basic functions and dataframe manipulation you should be more than fine. Overall, I found this course to be relatively interesting as well as fairly easy given the lenient grading. My only complaint would be that the assignments we completed (essentially components of the final project) didn't always have clearly laid out guidelines and expectations, however, they were graded very leniently as long as you put in sufficient effort. Professor Aryal is very knowledgeable and nice, but as the other review points out, slightly disorganized.

If you do not already know how to use Matlab well, I strongly recommend not taking this course. You’ll need some kind of programming experience for the final project, either Matlab or Python, but Professor Aryal only knows Matlab so if you choose python he won’t help you at all. The course is generally not clearly laid out, you’re likely to find yourself confused on what’s being asked of you for each assignment.

While this class is heavy on theory and math, it is extremely interesting and easily translates to real world problems (i.e. best way to set up an eBay auction to sell your used laptop online). Gaurab Aryal is super engaging during lecture, and it's not difficult to pay attention for the duration of the 75 minute lecture. The material is very focused on probability/calculus (basic derivatives/integrals, a very small number of more advanced integration techniques that you aren't expected to know or memorize for tests) so a basic knowledge of probability and being comfortable with calculus is important. We pretty much spent the whole semester finding equilibrium bidding strategies and expected auction revenues for varying styles of auctions under different set ups. Attendance is not required, but definitely helpful if you want to understand the complicated math on the lecture slides. Grade is 30% homework (6 per semester), 30% midterm, 40% final. The tests and homeworks were challenging but fair, and you can do well in this class if you put in enough time and effort.

The material taught in this course is probably the most dense I've studied in 4 years of UVA (compared to Game Theory, Industrial Economics, Basic Real Analysis, and a bunch of engineering courses). You study a few complex game-theory topics in very high detail- it is pretty much all math and proving equilibria. The workload isn't killer (6 assignments, midterm, final), but the hw's are conceptually the hardest I've done in college (though it helps if you go to office hours). Aryal is nice, and very into the subject area, but because of the material, the lectures are really dense and repetitive.

Overall, this is an interesting and potentially useful course, but know what you are getting into before you take it. I'd say it could be useful to anyone going into grad-school, research, or consulting in the areas of economics, computer science (and some other engineering fields), data science, and math. Also, it helps a lot if you take Game Theory first

So obnoxiously hard. Taking Game Theory before this will help you. Do not recommend. Very heavy math focus.

Professor Aryal is incredibly intelligent, and cares about everyone in his classes. He is a nice guy who wants everyone to learn and understand. It's difficult, though, because he is always operating on a mental level that might better be suited for teaching grad students.

The class itself is incredibly interesting. In very few classes at UVA can you actually learn how to make money (maximize revenue). The material is stupid hard sometimes, because it's based on papers written by people who went to graduate school and dedicated their lives to solving Auction Theory problems, but professor Aryal tries his best to break it down on his lecture slides, which he posts on collab and are the only real resource you need to succeed in the class. Grade is based on problem sets, a midterm, and a final. Class could probably use a discussion section, due to the difficulty, but professor Aryal assumes that his students are probably already the best; even if you don't do that well on the exams, if you demonstrate that you have tried and learned, you won't do poorly. I got an A- and put in on average maybe 4-5 hours per week.

Highly recommend this class, very valuable knowledge.