ECON 4200

This course is usually taught by Elzinga, but I honestly think I enjoyed it more with Swisher. Focuses mostly on reading cases, and it's mostly class discussion for the class time with a little bit of lecture thrown in. There's a long paper on any topic relating to Antitrust that you want to write about, but it's really not bad. As long as you keep up on the readings this class is great. Swisher was great at breaking down complicated issues and helping you to analyze the content without spoon feeding you the material. One of the best classes I've taken at UVA, I hope they bring Swisher back to teach it again.

Great class. Swisher is a practicing antitrust lawyer so he was a phenomenal person to teach this class but was also very nice and helpful in addition to smart. Final Exam is 100% of your grade unless you write a 15-page term paper. Didn't write the paper but wish I did. Cases that you read each week are all very interesting. My favorite econ elective I've taken so far!

Swisher is a very very nice guy. Extremely open to questions and talking with students. He's a practicing attorney at a law firm in DC dealing with antitrust cases, and he specializes in healthcare antitrust cases. So, he has very cool firsthand experience with the material of the course.

The course itself is just case law. There is essentially very little economics or economic theory involved, and no math at all. Every day is simply going through a casebook and learning about a different Supreme Court/federal court case that is used in antitrust policy. This got a little tiresome after a while, and trying to remember all the cases can be difficult. If you are interested in law, this is a good course as it deals with the particulars of an area of law.

Would recommend overall, since it was mildly interesting and not very hard. He's restructured the course so there are weekly reading quizzes at the beginning of lecture (these are very easy 3-question quizzes and the lowest 4 are dropped), a take-home midterm, and an in-class final. The midterm is open book essay responses, the final was closed book essay responses and IDs. Not that hard of a course and a fun teacher.