Jushan Bai

Take this class if you enjoy watching paint dry. This guy is probably the WORST professor I have come across at Columbia. He has zero ability to teach and his lectures are completely and utterly inaudible. He would walk in and just start writing down illegible equations on the board with absolutely no context whatsoever and when students would ask clarifying questions he answered with something completely unrelated (or maybe I just didn't understand him because NO ONE CAN). He speaks at a volume of -10 and even if you could hear him it would be impossible to distinguish any words from his speech because he has such a strong accent. Sitting in his class was the most miserable, stressful, and tragic thing I have ever made myself do. On three occasions I simply walked out halfway through because I was getting so frustrated and angry at this joke of a class. I resorted to learning everything by myself from the textbook but even that was difficult and inefficient. I also just stopped going to class for a period of time because of the stress of not being able to hear a word he said. The TA's are not helpful either so recitations won't save you. There is absolutely no guidance in this course. Please please save yourself and do not take this class. You are paying MONEY to go to this school so you can have REAL TEACHERS! While Bai may be a smart guy he does not know how to teach and yo…

The professor presents the material very clearly and with an excitement that makes one want to pay attention for a subject matter most consider boring. It's a very laid back class with the professor lecturing for the first month and students giving presentations for the rest of the semester. The proposal is due after the first few weeks, then two presentations spaced throughout the semester. You can get away without presenting until the last week, but be warned start on the paper early! Give yourself deadlines throughout the semester otherwise you'll come to reading week and still have 30 pages to write.

I think this is a must take if you're doing macro, but might not be very useful for non-macro students. Although it does cover some material applicable outside of macro (ie Bayesian methods) and GMM type estimators. 1 Columbia University: Arts & Sciences Fall 2022 Course: ECONGR6413_001_2022_3-MACRO-ECONOMETRICS : ECONGR6413_001_2022_3 - MACRO-ECONOMETRICS Instructor: Serena Ng

Heavy. 11 problem sets that take AGES (and use a lot of R so take even longer if you have to figure that out) 20% Midterm 30% Final 50% (if you do better on the final than on the midterm it counts as 80% but good luck with that lol)

One of the better Econometrics classes—the material isn't exciting (or at least it wasn't for me), but Bai is very clear in his lectures and it's easy to follow along with the textbook, which is surprisingly helpful. He's also really sweet in general. You're allowed to have a two-sided cheat sheet for the midterm, and two two-sided cheat sheets for the final; he really emphasizes what proofs and concepts you're supposed to know, so for some questions I ended up just copying over entire proofs from my sheet. The midterm average was 74.8/90, and the average for the final was 70.7/95. The pset questions are mostly from the textbook or proofs he's gone over in class/recitation (homeworks are graded from 0-100). The one issue I had with the class was that some homework questions required using R and even though the solutions were straightforward, looking up syntax took forever because we didn't go over R at all in class OR recitation. It wasn't a big deal but made doing homework a little more frustrating. Overall, I came in not remembering stats at all and still ended up with a good grade. The tests aren't crazy.

Mathematical Analysis, Linear Algebra, Optimization Theory, Measure Theory, Structural VAR

9 psets (1 dropped) - 20%, midterm - 30%, final - 50%

heard bai is teaching this again next year so wanted to post this (took it 2 years ago). if you want to actually learn metrics, this is the arguably the best intro to metrics columbia has to offer. personally i find metrics dry / wouldn't want to pursue this field further, but still did well in this class. he's good about reviewing stats before getting into the harder material. i also don't recall there ever being a mistake or typo on a pset or exam, and everything's pretty clear. overall a chill/nice prof, plus exams are fair, and he pretty much covers problems you'll see on the exams in class - so going to lecture is a good idea.

General maths which is necessary for economists

standard, can't complain (mt/final/weekly pset)