I will try to make this as comprehensive a review as possible. I will try to remain unbiased even though I loved the course and Professor Burton. The idea of this review is to present all information you should have since there is a lot of conflicting stories. The first part will focus on Burton as a prof (which I will also post on his other class ECON 434) and then the second part will focus on this course specifically.

**All about Professor Burton** - This applies to both ECON 434 and 437

Lecture style: Professor Burton is very knowledgeable in this subject, having taught it many times and having worked on the Street himself. Because of this, his lectures are in tune with what I -- and maybe you -- imagine old school high-level classes to be like. He posts slides that he rarely actually uses and more so talks about the subject matter. This is probably the first point of contention people have and you have read about him. The best way I can describe his class in one sentence is: if you view going to class as a machine where you input your time and through listening to him explain the subject you output a grade, this is not the class for you. As you can see in the grade distribution it is hard to get lower than a B. You can easily get an A by just reading his book. His book is the most important thing for the exam. He wrote it and has used it for years for this course so you can imagine that he will want you to word things how he words them in the book -- and in class -- when giving answers on the exams. I will touch more on the exams later. This was a long winded way of saying that if you go to class treat it like a seminar where you essentially get to hear a very knowledgable guest speaker talk about behavioral finance and often about the current state of financial markets. Again, he does sometimes include pieces of information such as how to word an idea on an exam. In summary, I believe people find his lectures boring because he does not always talk about things that will be on the exam.

Style of exams (still applies to both classes):
You will have 2 midterms and a final that are weighted 30%, 30%, and 40% respectively. The most annoying thing about these classes is the arbitrary grading. I took these classes with a friend and we would often say very similar if not the same things on exams and the grader would mark them differently. It seems that there may be a keyword that he wants you to mention. I do want to say that this should not be the deciding factor in taking vs not taking his class as he has mentioned that he is working on that. This also produces a relatively small variance in your numerical grade. In other words if you put the effort in to get an A, this grading inconsistency will not get you a B.

Interacting with students:
He is extremely nice and offers students to go to lunch with him on Tuesday and Wednesday (this may change if his new condo is built by the time you take the class). You go to Farmington and he talks about life and asks you about yourself. If the topics are finance focused it is more so about subjects not directly about class. I recommend doing this multiple times as it seems not many people take advantage of it and it will allow him to get to know you better.

Class content:
I enjoyed 437 more than 434. You learn a lot about psychology (the main book you read is Thinking: Fast and Slow). It honestly changed how I think and made me recognize biases that everyone has. I've enjoyed learning about stuff like loss aversion (the big idea you need to know for the exam).

First midterm: This is all about the Efficient Market Hypothesis and its critics. The big thing you need to know for this exam is Andrei Shleifer's article on noise trader risk.
Second midterm: This is very psychology-oriented. The big question is the loss aversion question where you should draw the prospect theory graph. The big thing to read here is Kahneman's book, but know some things in Thaler's book as that is a section that caught me off guard (he discounted it a bit at the beginning of the unit so I didn't read it).
Final: Combines both midterms and also academic articles on predictability of financial markets. Goes in depth in Gene Fama and Ken French's "The Cross Section" as well as others he will mention in class.

I was worried going into this class because the reviews are so mixed. Ended up really enjoying the content, and for a higher level Econ this class is an easy A. There's not much reading, the textbook chapters are very short, and it becomes abundantly clear if you attend class what information he cares about for the exam. At times, lecture did seem to drag on, and he does talk a lot about himself. However, Burton is a nice guy and the actual content is interesting and not too difficult. If you do the readings and attend most lectures you should feel very confident going into the exams. Read intro/conclusion of the articles he mentions, and read his book for other key points. Understand the author's argument and conclusion, and any points that may raise issues for the conclusion of the article or issues for the EMH. Also understanding how the different articles relate to each other (are they in agreement? what are their views? etc) is helpful to keep in mind while studying. Overall, I would recommend this course to anyone. You don't even really need to know anything about econ to take it. There's no homework, two exams and a final (30/30/40 % of grade), and reading is really minimal.

I understand this is something of an unpopular opinion but I absolutely could not stand Ed Burton. His lectures are pointless - he goes off on useless tangents just so he can brag about himself at least three times per class. Learning course material is confined almost exclusively to doing the readings on your own. HOWEVER, he will specifically put questions on the exams that are only answerable if you attended lecture. An example we had from this semester: "What psychological bias was illustrated using the mug in class?" It's clear his ego is the size of the lecture hall he teaches in, and he fetishizes the fact that he's the professor and you're his student. I just hated listening to him every Tues/Thurs. The class is very little work outside of keeping up with the readings and the curve is generous, it's just such a chore to attend.

This is also probably only applicable to this semester but he would spend 20 minutes every class talking nonsense about COVID-19 and spreading misinformation which only made me respect him less.

This class was fascinating. The material covered is the most useful stuff I have learned at this school. That being said, the concepts can be really tough to grasp at first - they appear very math-heavy, but I found that talking them out with other students in my class was really helpful. The lectures were very dry, hard to pay attention to, and I eventually stopped going to them. Since the only grades are based on the tests, and the tests are based on the readings, just taking a couple days before each test to thoroughly read and understand the material was really all I needed to do to be successful.

I think this class would really benefit from an engaged lecturer - the class periods at this point are just a filler. The material alone, however, is enough to highly recommend this class to anyone.

Not sure why Burton is getting so much hate on here. At the end of the day, his lectures, while not the most engaging, are still pretty entertaining as he has some cool stories to share. Regarding the exams, I think that anyone who's complaining probably just didn't read the material well enough. If you read the stuff and understand it, then you're pretty much guaranteed an A, so people really can't complain about his grading. The material itself was also pretty interesting. Overall, for a 4000 Econ elective, the class is pretty good.

One of the worst classes I have ever taken. Professor Burton's lectures are extremely boring and he goes off on extremely long tangents for almost the entire class. He also gives almost the same exact lecture everyday because he is extremely disorganized and doesn't look at the Powerpoints so just ends up repeating the same concepts. It's hard to figure out what to study because he spent so much of class talking about Greece, the Fed, and other random current events that have nothing to do with Behavioral Finance. He ends up asking extremely specific questions on the test. Sometimes if you do the readings you won't even remember the insignificant detail he is asking about. Also, the grading is completely arbitrary and it is difficult to understand why you've received a certain grade. I read the previous reviews before enrolling and thought it must not be that bad but YOU WILL REGRET TAKING THIS CLASS.

Soooooo this will be a long review but just bear with me here, it might be helpful. I have very mixed feelings about Professor Burton, like the entire class was a rollercoaster of emotions i felt towards him. At first, i thought he was okay seemed pretty normal, then i quickly hated him because he talked way too much about irrelevant things during lecture, then the hate grew even more to like A CRAZY level of hatred because he would constantly brag about himself and other rich famous people he was friends with, and then i started to realize he was a nice enough guy he just that type of old white businessman who loves to be social and network. Sometimes his tangents would distract me from what i was supposed to be focusing on, so you have to really pay attention to when he actually starts talking about the important material. For the readings you really just have to read the intro and conclusions and maybe skim the middle, which i was already doing because ya know ~laziness~ but he actually told us that halfway through the course this was the best way to read them. Since, they are real, scholarly articles written by famous people in economics/behavioral finance like Eugene Fama. The two books we had to read i definitely read one of them completely, but the other was so long i just skimmed and honestly that was fine for the exam because he goes over most of the important stuff in lecture from the books and other readings. Listen closely here though, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO DO IN THIS CLASS is read his behavioral finance book that he tells us to get. Like if you don't read anything in this class, at least try to read this because the topics he covered in lecture come seriously straight out of his book (i mean he wrote it so makes sense). Sometimes he doesn't explain things very well in class, so reading the book is super helpful to go over anything you're confused on. He even summarizes some important articles in there and tells you the major points from them. There are some chapters he did not assign that i also read since they were relevant to the articles we were supposed to read or things he said in class. My last tip is to just memorize a lot of the important things he says, like definitions of words. because on the exam the TA's have to take off points if its not like word for word what he wants. Kind of annoying but i got the hang of it by the second midterm. OH also he invites 8 people to lunch some weeks (just depends who replies to his emails fast enough). I went to two of these and the first one i did not enjoy cause he wasn't really connecting with the students, just kind of talking. The second one was a little better cause he knew me more (since i sat in the front) and remembered me from the last lunch. I think he is a decent person, he just came off as a stereotypical old white businessman at the start.... I really did enjoy learning about how people behave in the stock market and some psychological things that people do often. i think it is a good class to take once you get past some stuff. Also i did around average and above average a little bit because of these things i did so the curve really helped me at the end and i ended with a good grade. Ok i'm done thx.

Just posted my review for 4340 a few moments ago; Burton's courses are very similar for the most part, so if you want an overall skeleton of what to expect and really feel like reading a long paragraph of explanation about it from me (doubt you really will, but just in case I'm offering, I like writing mammoth reviews when I feel they're warranted, and did one for Michener's ECON 3720). Take 4340 before you take 4370, as Burton's testing format is the same in both, and being familiar with it is very helpful for this class. This class is probably two to three times as much reading as 4340 was, as well, and I felt you had to do the readings (with exceptions being the two books, which I skimmed) or at least be familiar with the wording in them to do well on the exams. Having been used to his class from the semester before, I didn't seriously acquaint myself with the article readings for the first exam, went in a bit overconfident and underprepared because I had another exam that day, and ended up about 5 points below the average (55 since the average was a 61, which was certainly disparaging having taken his class before). And when I skimmed The Undoing Project and read the articles/his textbook for the second exam, I did fairly well. Overall, this class's material was pretty interesting and worthwhile to learn, but I didn't find it as engaging as Theory of Financial Markets. I'd still suggest it to those who are interested in finance and are in the econ major/minor, but I'd probably only give this class a 6.5/10.

-He goes on tangents about economic state of the world offering his own predictions.

-If you like that sort of thing, he is a great professor to have

-He repeats the most important things he wants you to know, so just take good notes, and notice when he repeats subjects

- he pretty much tells you want he wants on the midterm and final the week before so pay attention there and ask him questions in office hours if what he says doesn't make sense

Prof. Burton is a great lecturer but the tests are challenging for a first time. The material is very interesting and overall it is a good course for Econ students.