Prof. McLaren is definitely the best ECON professor I met at UVA. He is knowledgable and nice to students. I don't understand why reviews sound relatively negative here. I really like this course, read every chapter in his book and got an A+ in the end.
Lectures are worthless. Do homework in a group; it's time-consuming and not easy. Studying for tests is ridiculous because his explanations of everything cut corners -- graphs aren't labeled, book oversimplifies the math, and his practice test solutions are poorly explained. Upside: you can have partners on the paper, and hw + the paper account for 40% of your grade.
McLaren definitely knows his stuff, but he's one of those people that should just not be a professor. I typically don't have a hard time paying attention in most lectures, but his were always SO difficult to sit through. He's not super effective at explaining things, and he doesn't seem to ever have his thoughts together even though he wrote the textbook he uses and has obviously been using the same slides for multiple semesters. Homework due every two weeks, not super hard but annoying. One 4 page paper, and a midterm and a final - both a mixture of short answer/calculation problems and multiple choice. Tests are trickier than they need to be for sure but not impossible.
It's not a hard class
Not an easy class. Study hard for the midterm and final.
Excellent case-based exploration of trade policies
Teacher wrote the book. Really helpful to read.
Lecture is kinda boring. Not a difficult class considering the workload and the option to work in group for PS and the essay.
mclaren is the most boring professor i have ever had. the content is interesting however so if you can take it with another professor i recommend it but avoid mclaren at all costs
Pretty hard class in my opinion. The professor wrote the book for the class so all of his lectures are pretty much word for word from the book. So you don't really have to go to class if you read the book. Tests are hard but they are curved.
