ECON 4370

This was my second class with Burton as an Econ minor and solidified my thoughts on him and his classes. He is just awful. His lectures could not be more boring. More than half of the time his brooding involves nothing but vain self-praise and name dropping of all the nobel prize winning people he has lunch with and all the boards of finance companies he sits on. I think this topic could be really interesting but he makes it unbearable. The test grading is really the worst part. No less than 5 times have a put nearly word for word the same response as another classmate on an exam and been rewarded no points while the other person got full credit and he won't change the grades. If you can avoid taking his classes, please do. There are much more competent professors in the Econ department. It is super nice he takes students out to lunch though. Great dude...terrible class.

I took this class as an economics major interested in behavioral economics but without a special interest in finance. For my interests, I could have gotten the same thing out of just reading the books Thinking, Fast and Slow and Misbehaving on my own. I didn't find the rest of the class's finance topics very interesting, and Burton's lectures aren't the most engaging. However, for a 4000 level Econ elective, this class had nearly no weekly homework--just a handful of readings that could be done while studying for the midterms, so that was a plus. The tests are graded a bit strangely, as others have said, but the class final grade distribution ends up just fine, so it's not too much of a concern.

I recommend taking Theory to Financial Markets before this course. There is hardly any overlap in the material, but the course is significantly easier if you are familiar with Burton's style of teaching and grading. So if you are a first year thinking about this class, pump the brakes. Take Theory to Financial Markets in the Fall and this course in the Spring–given you haven't been Burton'd out. The class is graded on a curve, and therefore, you will do a lot better if you know how to take Burton exams.

The material is really interesting, and everyone seems to really enjoy the readings. However, Burton presents the material in a way that is eerily reminiscent of Mr. Miyagi on the night of his wife's anniversary. In summary, the class is very interesting and thought provoking, but your GPA would appreciate it if you took this after Theory of Financial Market.

I had my initial reservations about Professor Burton, but the class topic seemed interesting so I decided to plow through anyways. The content turned out to be pretty interesting - a nice mix of psych and econ, and Burton's teaching style is pretty straight-forward once you get used to it. However, studying for exams can be rather tedious - lots of readings, had to read 2 400ish pages books for the 2nd midterms on top of papers, so if you're bad with readings/memorization (like I am), maybe you'll want to reconsider your options, especially if you're aiming for that A. I had to spend a week studying for the 2nd midterm to get a pretty decent grade.

All in all, a fun class, definitely worth taking if you're more particular to learning and not grades.

Prof. Burton is a great lecturer but the tests are challenging for a first time. The material is very interesting and overall it is a good course for Econ students.

-He goes on tangents about economic state of the world offering his own predictions.

-If you like that sort of thing, he is a great professor to have

-He repeats the most important things he wants you to know, so just take good notes, and notice when he repeats subjects

- he pretty much tells you want he wants on the midterm and final the week before so pay attention there and ask him questions in office hours if what he says doesn't make sense

Just posted my review for 4340 a few moments ago; Burton's courses are very similar for the most part, so if you want an overall skeleton of what to expect and really feel like reading a long paragraph of explanation about it from me (doubt you really will, but just in case I'm offering, I like writing mammoth reviews when I feel they're warranted, and did one for Michener's ECON 3720). Take 4340 before you take 4370, as Burton's testing format is the same in both, and being familiar with it is very helpful for this class. This class is probably two to three times as much reading as 4340 was, as well, and I felt you had to do the readings (with exceptions being the two books, which I skimmed) or at least be familiar with the wording in them to do well on the exams. Having been used to his class from the semester before, I didn't seriously acquaint myself with the article readings for the first exam, went in a bit overconfident and underprepared because I had another exam that day, and ended up about 5 points below the average (55 since the average was a 61, which was certainly disparaging having taken his class before). And when I skimmed The Undoing Project and read the articles/his textbook for the second exam, I did fairly well. Overall, this class's material was pretty interesting and worthwhile to learn, but I didn't find it as engaging as Theory of Financial Markets. I'd still suggest it to those who are interested in finance and are in the econ major/minor, but I'd probably only give this class a 6.5/10.

Soooooo this will be a long review but just bear with me here, it might be helpful. I have very mixed feelings about Professor Burton, like the entire class was a rollercoaster of emotions i felt towards him. At first, i thought he was okay seemed pretty normal, then i quickly hated him because he talked way too much about irrelevant things during lecture, then the hate grew even more to like A CRAZY level of hatred because he would constantly brag about himself and other rich famous people he was friends with, and then i started to realize he was a nice enough guy he just that type of old white businessman who loves to be social and network. Sometimes his tangents would distract me from what i was supposed to be focusing on, so you have to really pay attention to when he actually starts talking about the important material. For the readings you really just have to read the intro and conclusions and maybe skim the middle, which i was already doing because ya know ~laziness~ but he actually told us that halfway through the course this was the best way to read them. Since, they are real, scholarly articles written by famous people in economics/behavioral finance like Eugene Fama. The two books we had to read i definitely read one of them completely, but the other was so long i just skimmed and honestly that was fine for the exam because he goes over most of the important stuff in lecture from the books and other readings. Listen closely here though, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO IN THIS CLASS is read his behavioral finance book that he tells us to get. Like if you don't read anything in this class, at least try to read this because the topics he covered in lecture come seriously straight out of his book (i mean he wrote it so makes sense). Sometimes he doesn't explain things very well in class, so reading the book is super helpful to go over anything you're confused on. He even summarizes some important articles in there and tells you the major points from them. There are some chapters he did not assign that i also read since they were relevant to the articles we were supposed to read or things he said in class. My last tip is to just memorize a lot of the important things he says, like definitions of words. because on the exam the TA's have to take off points if its not like word for word what he wants. Kind of annoying but i got the hang of it by the second midterm. OH also he invites 8 people to lunch some weeks (just depends who replies to his emails fast enough). I went to two of these and the first one i did not enjoy cause he wasn't really connecting with the students, just kind of talking. The second one was a little better cause he knew me more (since i sat in the front) and remembered me from the last lunch. I think he is a decent person, he just came off as a stereotypical old white businessman at the start.... I really did enjoy learning about how people behave in the stock market and some psychological things that people do often. i think it is a good class to take once you get past some stuff. Also i did around average and above average a little bit because of these things i did so the curve really helped me at the end and i ended with a good grade. Ok i'm done thx.

One of the worst classes I have ever taken. Professor Burton's lectures are extremely boring and he goes off on extremely long tangents for almost the entire class. He also gives almost the same exact lecture everyday because he is extremely disorganized and doesn't look at the Powerpoints so just ends up repeating the same concepts. It's hard to figure out what to study because he spent so much of class talking about Greece, the Fed, and other random current events that have nothing to do with Behavioral Finance. He ends up asking extremely specific questions on the test. Sometimes if you do the readings you won't even remember the insignificant detail he is asking about. Also, the grading is completely arbitrary and it is difficult to understand why you've received a certain grade. I read the previous reviews before enrolling and thought it must not be that bad but YOU WILL REGRET TAKING THIS CLASS.

Not sure why Burton is getting so much hate on here. At the end of the day, his lectures, while not the most engaging, are still pretty entertaining as he has some cool stories to share. Regarding the exams, I think that anyone who's complaining probably just didn't read the material well enough. If you read the stuff and understand it, then you're pretty much guaranteed an A, so people really can't complain about his grading. The material itself was also pretty interesting. Overall, for a 4000 Econ elective, the class is pretty good.