I really like her as a person but not as a professor. She went WAY too fast in class and I ended up self-studying after about week 3- which served me a lot better because her powerpoint slides are VERY helpful. The best thing about this class was the tutor, BLESS HER SOUL. She was SO helpful with explaining difficult concepts. Also I bought the textbook but stopped using it after week 1. I don't think it's a necessity if you took AP Econ in high school, but if you did not take AP Econ in high school it might be a good idea for you to get. The text helped some people a lot but not so much for me.

going to bau's office hours for the problem sets is extremely helpful because she essentially gives you the answers and explains how to work through the problems. my TA was extremely unhelpful and didn't really know what she was talking about and often made mistakes in section when explaining problems. overall, the class wasn't horrible but I did have some econ knowledge (AP macro and micro) so that definitely helped. i think if it's your first time with any form of econ the class is definitely not easy so go to office hours!

Professor Bau did a really good job explaining economic concepts and tying everything into public policy! She taught more than just the content from Econ 1, (many Econ 11 concepts too, just without the calculus). Everything extra was 100% worth being included. Excellent supplemental materials provided. I 100% would take another class with her, I learned so much!

I think this class is definitively one of the hardest Pub AFF classes, it requires taking actual notes during class and not skipping. The textbook was helpful but I did not use it much. One of the best aspects of this class is the problem set system she has, youre allowed to have a group of 3 members to work on the weekly problem sets which allows you to get closer to your classmates and makes the problem set a lot easier. Overall, this class is hard if you do not go to lecture or take notes, its easy if you find a good group of people to work with and go to class/ go to tutoring.

I had never taken an economics class before and did fine in this class--however, I think I got lucky due to the open-note exams because of the pandemic. I couldn't imagine having to do the midterm and final closed book. The midterm was 1 hour and 15 minutes long and although I got an A on it, it felt very rushed and I know a lot of others were unable to finish. The final was three hours long and not as rushed as the midterm although it was cumulative for the whole quarter and more difficult. The problem sets were not bad at all as long as you start ahead of time (about a week or so) and you're allowed to work with up to two other people and use notes, plus the TAs help a lot and confirm answers so it really isn't too hard. Professor Bau's lectures are not very engaging though because I felt like I was able to learn the material better watching 7-minute YouTube videos and studying on my own than watching the lectures. Since the class is required for Public Affairs, there are some connections to public policy, such as environmental regulation or rent control, that I enjoyed and learning about those connections was my favorite part of the class.

Professor Bau was extremely unhelpful in this course, and so was my TA. She made the work unnecessarily hard for absolutely no reason, she admitted this too. If you have to take this class, please take it over the summer as it is more manageable than during the academic year. I was in TWO tutoring courses when I took this class, went to office hours and still struggled in the course. I had to self teach after week 2 because she rushes through the information and doesn't make sure that we REALLY understand the material. Whoever said that we don't "try hard enough" is really underestimating other student's hard work, and precisely you don't know what other students have done to be successful in this course. I would avoid at all costs unless it is absolutely mandatory.

Lectures are discussion based where we would talk about important academic papers in development economics that we were supposed to read before coming to class. You were not expected to understand the methodology in detail too much as it is pretty mathematical most of the time. I think if you are interested in learning to read and think about academic papers in economics, this course is excellent and I could not recommend it enough, even if you are not interested in development economics.

You also get some exposure to Stata which is cool for the problem sets and the final project. It certainly isn't enough to teach you anything more than an introductory level of Stata, but it is still good.

The class graded on these problem sets in Stata (one of which was kinda reproducing the results of a paper we read in class but simplified), a final research project that did not have to deal with endogeneity entirely, and policy briefings which are where you recommend certain policies or note important things to consider when designing a randomized controlled trial using what you learned from reading the papers in class.

My perception is that everyone in the class got an A or something close to that. The professor makes everything super understandable. The workload was about 40 or so pages of academic papers each lecture, which would take me several hours usually but I took notes over the papers generally. I do think that lectures were kinda strange because they seemed to summarize a lot of what you would read, but the discussion questions were really the most valuable part of going to lecture because you got to think about things like identification problems and think critically.

One last thing I will mention is that this class is also a graduate course for public policy or something. The graduate students were not actually that intimidating. If you've taken some econometrics you are probably not too far behind them. I partnered with two graduate students for the problem sets, policy briefings, and final project and in my humble opinion, I contributed meaningfully to all of them.

Honestly if you are not a pub aff major, just dont take the class. There is no point in taking this as a sub for econ or a ge just dont. Take econ 1 or 2 (whichever is microecon) instead. If you have to take her, dont bother going to her office hours because she is no help. The TA's were even confused about her lectures too. THE LITERAL TA's!!!!

Going into this class, I had zero experience with microecon and was very worried about not being the strongest math student.
The course was difficult for me, but definitely manageable. Professor Bau was a great teacher and I learned a lot, even though I sometimes had to go to office hours to seek extra help. The tests were fair in relation to the material and most of the homework was group projects.

This professor literally could not be worse. My study group and I had to teach ourselves the entire class as her lectures were unorganized, uninformative, and a genuine waste of time. Luckily, the TA’s were nice and more knowledgeable on the subject. There were also four problem sets of homework that were extremely hard (especially when the professor doesn’t know how to teach the class.) I’m not sure if this was just because this is the first time the course has been taught, but it was terrible. Overall interesting stuff once you can actually learn it, but I would not recommend taking this class unless it is taught by a different professor.