Ronald Miller

This class was horribly run, disorganized, and poor in quality. While Professor Miller is certainly a very nice person and decent lecturer, unfortunately I did not feel we were given sufficient practice nor guidance leading up to a much different exam. Avoid it! Our midterm had a HIGH of 90% almost which is unheard of for an economics class with a 60% average almost

If you’re taking this class as a nonmajor looking to learn a little bit of econ, fulfill requirements, go ahead. Ronald Miller is a pretty good lecturer, but he doesn’t deviate from the textbook too much. You can not go to class (which many people did, seeing as it’s an 8:40) and self study and still learn everything from the class. We didn’t really cover macro in my class, but we got a good foundation of micro. If you’re looking for the ~experience~ and if you’re willing to put in effort, I’d recommend Gulati. I was satisfied with this class as my one and only econ class at Columbia, but I’m sure if I wanted to further my study of econ, I would’ve wanted to take Gulati.

Don't do it. You'll be succumbed to rambling lecture with homework you'll have to try to mine the book in order to understand, and then be blindsided by tests which are way beyond what's been discussed in class. I got a good grade (so you know I'm not salty) but I would have waited until the spring cycle if I'd known what I was getting myself into. Miller is a good guy but inept as a teacher.

AVOID!!!!!! AVOID THIS MAN AT ALL COSTS!! Never have I taken a prof as lazy and useless as Ron Miller. I thought nothing could get worse than stats with Sheela Kolluri but I was SO WRONG, this class was infinitely worse. - Lectures were totally useless. He didn't post slides beforehand so you couldn't print them out to take notes, and they were basically a dumbed down version of the textbook with no math or application. Plus, he'd always say things in class like, "In the real world, you never use this" or "In the real world, this test is never accurate." But WHO CARES about the real world, when all this stuff is going to show up on our exams and you haven't taught it to us??? - No cheatsheets. He would say we wouldn't need them, and then would say that he would "provide us with any formulas we'd need on the exam", and then wouldn't provide us with any on the exam really. And he wouldn't provide us the formula sheet ahead of time (obviously since it didn't exist) because he said that would be "too much work to go through the textbook and look at all the formulas and decide which ones to give." Again, lazy. - Problem sets most weeks that got harder as time went on and became more and more focused on Stata. Again, nothing he said in lecture ever helped with the problem sets. Find a good TA (shout-out to Shen, the best TA and only helpful person in this class) and go to recitation…

IS-LM model, Solow model, consumption decision, nominal rigidity and price stickiness

My least favourite professor by far. His lectures are dry and he makes easy concepts difficult to understand. His quizzes are ok - medium to hard - with TAs often marking work down for no reason (students have to then go back and get it remarked to see it go up 80%...). His course breakdown is 50% exam, and the rest assignments and quizzes. I would very much steer clear of Professor Millers classes. You will learn very little, get an average stamp for your GPA and wake up way too early (840 lecture).

Ron is a nice guy and he clearly knows what he's teaching; but for the class, Ron Miller's course is a pain in the butt. The class seemed okay at first, but the midterm was absolutely horrific. Miller claims that he tends to put one "really difficult" question on exams to distinguish between really good students ..and the rest of us. Unfortunately, this question goes miles out of the boundary of what we learned, making it impossiblé to get a good grade. If you HAVE to take this class, then take it and be ready to devote yourself to Mankiw's writing. If you have a choice and want an actually enjoyable experience, RETREAT.

macroeconomic models (Keynesian, Solow, Consumption (Ramsey, Diamond, Hall, CBCAPM), nominal rigidity, Phillip's curve, price setting, Lucas supply curve, Fisher model, Taylor model, Calvo model)

Do not take Professor Miller's class. Worst professor I've had at Columbia. 1. Syllabus The syllabus for this class was basically useless. His outline for the course showed how much effort he put into in organizing the course; it was just a list of the chapters from the textbook that you had to read, without any clear distinction as to which chapters will be covered in which lectures. It was no different from the textbook's table of contents. It didn't have any dates, and towards the end, he didn't even bother listing the page numbers you had to read for the chapters. It simply said "TBD." He only updated the class on the syllabus when people asked and made requests on Piazza by saying read the rest of the textbook. 2. Lectures + PPT slides After the first couple lectures, I felt like the ppt slides for the lectures were made literally the night before. The PPT slides had SO MANY ERRORS - typos and incorrect explanations of economic models. A TA had to point out that Prof Miller's slides were wrong during a review session, and before quizzes, people flooded Piazza asking for clarifications on the slides. The lectures and slides also did not cover all that was in the readings, which was frustrating because you didn't know what to focus on for quizzes and exams. Also, I felt like he put in a lot unnecessary information - stuff that wasn't even in the textbook, didn't need to kno…

Ron Miller is pretty straightforward. His lectures can get quite boring, but they are very factual and useful. Sitting in the auditorium of International Affairs can put you to sleep. He does tend to give decent grades (I thought so anyway). Going to lectures is beneficial, but the class can be passed without them. The midterm and final are a little difficult (especially 'true, false, and uncertain' problems and anything to do with OPEC), but the grades are assigned on a curve fluctuating with B+ as the median.