ECO N4505

The course is difficult, though rewarding. Out of my entire Columbia experience thus far, this has been my favorite class. I learned an incredible amount from this class. The information is relayed well, and the textbook is expertly written to explain complicated topics in simplistic manners. Be prepared to study, this is not a class you can take passively. Problem sets are going to be your weekly challenge. That said, if you read the textbook, you should be fine overall. I highly recommend this class to anyone interested in going on to a PhD in economics. If you are someone who is taking econ just because - and you want to party on the weekends with your frat bros, do not take this class. You will fail. Because of the difficulty of the material, not many people will stick to the class (less than 20 total my semester). Those who stick to the class are very smart and a good group to stay in contact with. The mid-term and final are difficult, though fair. You can perform well if you studied well as you did the problem sets. If you blow off the textbook, you will do poorly.

The man is a genius. What more do you need to know to take this class?

weekly PSets, midterm and final. The midterm was definitely harder than the final, and the Psets can be incomplete sometimes because they're so hard.

Quite possibly the worst lecturer I have had at Columbia. Mostly due to his lack of organisation and inability to get basic things right. The midterm was a mess and penalised students who didn't understand the wording of the questions. During the midterm he had clarify just about every question interrupting the exam multiple times. Final review session was delayed by over an hour and half leaving students on the floor waiting for him to organise a class room. I know multiple people who got close to 100% on the final but still left the class with a B due to the mess that was the midterm.

Prof. Schmitt-Grohe is an extremely knowledgeable and thorough professor. That being said this class is not easy. You learn an incredible amount about international macro - you start off with some basic models that get more complex throughout the semester. Problem sets and studying will take quite a bit of time, but the book is a good basis to start off from for studying. Shout out to the TA for making the class easier to manage - if I remember correctly his name is Ken Teoh? Wonderful recitations that make the material easier to digest when things in class go too fast.

Yes, this man won the Nobel Prize for Economics. We all understand that the econ department considers him the MAN. But be forewarned before you take this course. Even before he won the Nobel, you could tell that it was a bad sign when his TA's would be teaching more classes than him. OK, so maybe he's busy these days building his palatial villa in Spain and a little too important for us undergraduates, but cmon, we should reap some of the benefits of such an esteemed scholar, shouldn't we? After all, we are paying top dollar to come here, so you would expect the best for what you paid for, right?

Doable-hard problem sets. Hard midterm and final.

I tend to disagree with the negative review. I found Professor Mundell to be accessible outside the classroom, and he was helpful in guiding my paper along. And, it isn't everyday that you have a Nobel Prize winner teaching you. It doesn't get any better than that.

This class is definitely not an easy economics elective. Unless you're really passionate about international macro (and a lot of the subject material is really interesting), you probably should not take this class. The only "textbook" is the manuscript for the one she is currently writing and it is filled with typos and mistakes. Homework and exam problems range from moderate to impossible. And the only way to practice for exams is to do the problems and there are NO SOLUTIONS. After the second midterm, we learned three pretty difficult models. NONE of them showed up on the final. It was so incredibly unfair that we slaved away at memorizing those models for the final and the entire final was just stuff before the second midterm. There seemed to be little communication between the professor and TAs, so then even less communication between the TAs and students.