This unit felt pretty brutal. Lots of content to keep on top of. Lectures can be a bit all over the place. Really high standards in assessments, a substantial portion of the class got zero on the essay. If you stay on top of the content, you can definitely do well, but it's easy to fall behind. Chris is fair, very knowledgable, and quite approachable. I don't rate this unit low because there's anything wrong with it, but more because I probably shouldn't have taken it. You will not be prepared for this unit unless you have a wider economics background, do NOT assume that level two microeconomics is enough.

Definitely a good choice for third year economics. You do a little bit of advanced theory and then each week go through the intuition behind an interesting and important economic paper (you're not expected to read the them), so I'd especially recommend the unit if you are looking to do honors as he gives you a good overview of some classic economic research techniques. The content starts off quite hard but gets easier as the emphasis moves away from theory and onto the papers. The lecturer's presentation style can be a bit scattered (and the lecture slides are equally scattered) - watch at home where you can pause and rewind, rather than in person - but everything is ironed out in the tutes. Participation in these tutes is 30% (!!) and you are expected to be prepared but if you do prep a bit and the make contributions you'll get full marks which really boosts your grade. A few of the tute questions are very very hard but you're not expected to get those. Mid-sem and final make up the rest of the marks and they are generally straightforward. There is an essay component to the final but there is a choice of five questions and they make it very clear what is likely to come up so you can prep really well - there were no surprises.