ECON 4370

This class was fascinating. The material covered is the most useful stuff I have learned at this school. That being said, the concepts can be really tough to grasp at first - they appear very math-heavy, but I found that talking them out with other students in my class was really helpful. The lectures were very dry, hard to pay attention to, and I eventually stopped going to them. Since the only grades are based on the tests, and the tests are based on the readings, just taking a couple days before each test to thoroughly read and understand the material was really all I needed to do to be successful.

I think this class would really benefit from an engaged lecturer - the class periods at this point are just a filler. The material alone, however, is enough to highly recommend this class to anyone.

I understand this is something of an unpopular opinion but I absolutely could not stand Ed Burton. His lectures are pointless - he goes off on useless tangents just so he can brag about himself at least three times per class. Learning course material is confined almost exclusively to doing the readings on your own. HOWEVER, he will specifically put questions on the exams that are only answerable if you attended lecture. An example we had from this semester: "What psychological bias was illustrated using the mug in class?" It's clear his ego is the size of the lecture hall he teaches in, and he fetishizes the fact that he's the professor and you're his student. I just hated listening to him every Tues/Thurs. The class is very little work outside of keeping up with the readings and the curve is generous, it's just such a chore to attend.

This is also probably only applicable to this semester but he would spend 20 minutes every class talking nonsense about COVID-19 and spreading misinformation which only made me respect him less.

I was worried going into this class because the reviews are so mixed. Ended up really enjoying the content, and for a higher level Econ this class is an easy A. There's not much reading, the textbook chapters are very short, and it becomes abundantly clear if you attend class what information he cares about for the exam. At times, lecture did seem to drag on, and he does talk a lot about himself. However, Burton is a nice guy and the actual content is interesting and not too difficult. If you do the readings and attend most lectures you should feel very confident going into the exams. Read intro/conclusion of the articles he mentions, and read his book for other key points. Understand the author's argument and conclusion, and any points that may raise issues for the conclusion of the article or issues for the EMH. Also understanding how the different articles relate to each other (are they in agreement? what are their views? etc) is helpful to keep in mind while studying. Overall, I would recommend this course to anyone. You don't even really need to know anything about econ to take it. There's no homework, two exams and a final (30/30/40 % of grade), and reading is really minimal.

I will try to make this as comprehensive a review as possible. I will try to remain unbiased even though I loved the course and Professor Burton. The idea of this review is to present all information you should have since there is a lot of conflicting stories. The first part will focus on Burton as a prof (which I will also post on his other class ECON 434) and then the second part will focus on this course specifically.

**All about Professor Burton** - This applies to both ECON 434 and 437

Lecture style: Professor Burton is very knowledgeable in this subject, having taught it many times and having worked on the Street himself. Because of this, his lectures are in tune with what I -- and maybe you -- imagine old school high-level classes to be like. He posts slides that he rarely actually uses and more so talks about the subject matter. This is probably the first point of contention people have and you have read about him. The best way I can describe his class in one sentence is: if you view going to class as a machine where you input your time and through listening to him explain the subject you output a grade, this is not the class for you. As you can see in the grade distribution it is hard to get lower than a B. You can easily get an A by just reading his book. His book is the most important thing for the exam. He wrote it and has used it for years for this course so you can imagine that he will want you to word things how he words them in the book -- and in class -- when giving answers on the exams. I will touch more on the exams later. This was a long winded way of saying that if you go to class treat it like a seminar where you essentially get to hear a very knowledgable guest speaker talk about behavioral finance and often about the current state of financial markets. Again, he does sometimes include pieces of information such as how to word an idea on an exam. In summary, I believe people find his lectures boring because he does not always talk about things that will be on the exam.

Style of exams (still applies to both classes):
You will have 2 midterms and a final that are weighted 30%, 30%, and 40% respectively. The most annoying thing about these classes is the arbitrary grading. I took these classes with a friend and we would often say very similar if not the same things on exams and the grader would mark them differently. It seems that there may be a keyword that he wants you to mention. I do want to say that this should not be the deciding factor in taking vs not taking his class as he has mentioned that he is working on that. This also produces a relatively small variance in your numerical grade. In other words if you put the effort in to get an A, this grading inconsistency will not get you a B.

Interacting with students:
He is extremely nice and offers students to go to lunch with him on Tuesday and Wednesday (this may change if his new condo is built by the time you take the class). You go to Farmington and he talks about life and asks you about yourself. If the topics are finance focused it is more so about subjects not directly about class. I recommend doing this multiple times as it seems not many people take advantage of it and it will allow him to get to know you better.

Class content:
I enjoyed 437 more than 434. You learn a lot about psychology (the main book you read is Thinking: Fast and Slow). It honestly changed how I think and made me recognize biases that everyone has. I've enjoyed learning about stuff like loss aversion (the big idea you need to know for the exam).

First midterm: This is all about the Efficient Market Hypothesis and its critics. The big thing you need to know for this exam is Andrei Shleifer's article on noise trader risk.
Second midterm: This is very psychology-oriented. The big question is the loss aversion question where you should draw the prospect theory graph. The big thing to read here is Kahneman's book, but know some things in Thaler's book as that is a section that caught me off guard (he discounted it a bit at the beginning of the unit so I didn't read it).
Final: Combines both midterms and also academic articles on predictability of financial markets. Goes in depth in Gene Fama and Ken French's "The Cross Section" as well as others he will mention in class.