ECON 4400

If you have a chance to take a class with Mark Thomas, take it!! He is an amazing lecturer with a true passion for the subject matter. Although his "American Economic History" class has tough reviews and tough grading, this class is different (I think TAs grade the essays in that class, versus this one he grades himself).

The class was structured as two presentation (that you do with a partner), two papers (roughly 6-7 pages and have 1-2 weeks to do), and a final exam that is in-class essays, but open note. You are also graded on participation, although I found that it was always the same 5-6 people in class who participated. The readings are all economic papers on various subjects such as why Africa is so underdeveloped, culture's impact on economic behaviors, why Britain rose to power in the Industrial Revolution, path dependency, long-run growth, ethnic fragmentation, and more. You will definitely learn a lot of history through this class, both about economic development and just general world history.

I came in having not taken a history class since high school and not writing a paper since first year (I'm a fourth year). I found myself appreciating the change of pace from exam-based classes to this paper-based class. If you KNOW that you absolutely hate writing, maybe don't take this class. But if you want an econ elective with a professor that you will love and you don't mind writing / can discipline yourself with timing, I'd recommend this class. Week to week it isn't too much work other than just keeping up with the readings and the two presentations throughout the semester. Also, an open note final helps SO much because you don't have to memorize all the papers read throughout the semester.

Also, definitely go to office hours for this class. His paper prompts were rather open and a bit confusing, but going to his office hours and asking questions helped clear up the prompts and definitely helped me do well. Also, he is just such a funny and charismatic guy who has many life stories. I had a very positive experience with this class and cannot recommend Professor Thomas enough.

Thomas has a reputation for being a pretty tough/harsh professor. He definitely expects a lot out of his students, but if you manage your time well and put in some effort it is not difficult to do well in the class. There were about 150 pages of reading per week and was mostly discussion-based. You are graded on participation, 2 presentations, a midterm paper, and a final paper. You definitely don't need to do all of the reading to do well as long as you understand the main arguments and can synthesize the different papers on one topic. Thomas is also very engaging in office hours and happy to discuss your presentations and paper topic. I would recommend this class to econ majors that need a break from quant heavy classes.

When I took the class (fall '16): Professor Thomas is pretty funny and tries to get everyone involved, the syllabus is daunting - I'm talking 90-150 pages of economic history research publications per class, and it genuinely covers the big topics you'll find in economics. During the semester I was taking two other economics classes and more than once those classes cited research that I had actually read through, giving me an advantage over other people in the class. However, I made the decision to read everything in the syllabus, which I think makes over 3000 pages for the semester, a stupid amount of reading. You won't discuss everything in class, and he at least didn't tell us before class which articles were most important for the next class's discussion.
Overall: super informative, tons of work. (2) 5-6 page synthesis papers, (1) take home-final. Keep up decently with readings (skim) and you'll be fine.