Padma Desai

I dont understand the bad reviews. Padma is a very nice lady, always willing to explain anything and absolutely helpful. This class is very interesting, this is not the typical Econ class at Columbia, this class is based on historical facts and no math needed. You will have the opportunity to learn major financial crisis like Russia 98 - which is the reason LTCM failed if any of you know what this is. You will also be covering the breakup of the USSR and the main reasons for it - she actually lived in the USSR for a while. Another great topic we covered was East Asian financial crisis, Brazil and Argentina which has the title for the largest sovereign default on its debt in 2001 aprox 95bn. If you want to work in Wall Street or get an internship there, this is an absolutely interesting and helpful class, I remember talking about this class during my internship at a major BB bank.

There was this one time I stayed awake for an entire lecture. That was also the one time I chugged 2 cups of coffee beforehand. Every other time, I dozed off within the first 20 minutes and never regained consciousness until class was over. I tried to tackle this problem by bringing my DS. Didn't work. Still fell asleep. That, in a nutshell, is how exciting Desai's class was. Padma is a very brilliant economist. Her accomplishments speak for themselves, and I'd be a fool to question her knowledge. However, she's very dry and painfully by the book. She tries to remedy this by telling some 5 minute funny story every class. But at the end of the day, Principles of Economics is just a very, very boring class. The saving grace of this course is that it's not very hard. The concepts themselves are pretty straightforward. The homeworks are a breeze, the midterm was a total joke, and the final, although harder than the midterm, was not a problem. I ended up getting an A just by keeping up with the reading. Speaking of the reading, we used Hubbard and O'Brien textbook, which I much prefer over Mankiw, which has a tendency to oversimplify many concepts.

I thought she was a great prof that was extremely approachable. The class wasn't always that interesting because as it is "Problems of Emerging Markets," she had to cover all the major events, and not all were that interesting. But the paper that you had to write for the class was why the class was good. It gave you an opportunity to research a topic that was fascinating to you and she was pretty lenient on what you could research on, so I liked the class.

I wouldn't recommend this class to anyone. Yes, the material is interesting but the way the class is structured and run is a complete joke. She gave us a midterm, gave us grades and then told us those grades were completely irrelevant toward the finals grade. Final grade = final exam grade, even though it wasn't cumulative and only covered the second half of the semester. Why bother going to class the first half, or even grade midterms? After class, I went to speak with her about the midterm grades and she assured me that they weren't completely irrelevant and was simply for students who didn't do well. Not true. I also thought that they would be 50/50 averaged, nope. Totally ridiculous logic on grading. Material wasn't difficult and I didn't do badly, just feel like a bait and switch was pulled and think it's unfair. It's a joke and I'm humiliated on behalf of Columbia for a professor like this to be recognized here. No one is more disappointed than I am about it. I looked up to her writing and her experience. The class is run like an afterthought. Her lectures are a bit dull, but the material is interesting. Take a different professor, don't waste your money. It's not an easy A, so there's no point.

Where do I even begin? How could a course that seemingly started off so well finish so disastrously for everyone involved? Let the data speak for itself. In a class of 233 people, the mean score on the final exam was a 67/100. That is an atrocious statistic. The final exam for the course was an absolutely convoluted nightmare. It was by itself a hard test and it was obviously very harshly graded by the TAs. Professor Desai even sounded disappointed in her valedictory e-mail to the class: "The mean on the exam was much lower than for the midterm [which was 82/100]--approximately 67/100." This course is not a "Principles" of Economics course. It is a "Minutia" of Economics course. You have to know thousands of definitions from the Hubbard/O'Brien textbook, and only four of them will appear on the exam. Economics Professors, if you are reading this, let me offer some advice as to how you could improve this course. 1) Do not assign as many chapters for the students to read. I could think of at least ten chapters that you could cut, and go into more detail into the fewer chapters that you assign. 2) Completely re-work the teaching assistant sections. Obviously if the mean score on the final exam was a 67/100, these sections were worthless and did nothing. 3) Don't use Hubbard/O'Brien as a textbook. It's far too detailed for an introductory economics course. Use Mankiw's "Principles…

The class is pretty straight forward - the first half is based on the two books that are assigned for the class and are lecture/discussions. The second half is presentations of papers by all students. Although the second half can be at times boring, it's a pretty light course for a seminar. Prof. Desai is very approachable and willing to help you on the paper.

The professor's lectures were very disorganized. She would jump around from point to point and if you stopped listening for one second you would be lost. While it's evident she knows a lot, she does not know how to communicate this knowledge to students. DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS. It's not worth it as you'll leave without learning much and somehow have to cram for exams which is hard to due when she expects memorization of everything she ever said and wrote.

This review is for Professor Desai's "Principles of Economics." Professor Desai is an extremely nice person with some interesting and funny stories, and obviously brilliant. Her class, however, tended to be pretty dry (with the exception of the stories) and her style of teaching is essentially copying examples from the textbook onto the chalkboard. She doesn't explain things any differently than the book does, so if you didn't understand it in the book you probably won't grasp it in class either. Overall she seems like a nice person and there's no question that she is incredibly smart and accomplished, but I'm not sure I would take the course again.

Though the class was a seminar, it was more like a lecture with 10 people (mostly sipa students). She is incredibly knowledgeable about international politics and has refreshing views on world trade (non-myopic, unlike most economists). We studied 14 countries' recent economic and political reforms in the last 15 years and the troubles they faced going from socialist/planned economies to capitalist/open economies. The last few weeks were spent doing individual presentations to the class describing our final research papers (ex. looking at Brazil's monetary policy) rather than her lectures. The reading was engaging and useful to prepare for the midterm.

Please stay away from this professor !!! I was so exited to take this class (Transition Economies) but already during the first two classes got a bad feeling about this professor. Why didn't I drop it?? Don't ask... The most boring class I've ever taken and the worse professor I've ever had!! Sorry... Most of the students did not bother to attend the lectures and showed up for the in-class mid-term and the final. After speaking to about 10 students I was reassured that I was not alone ... most of the students hated it!!!!