impressions from my first week

I realize that most of you have probably been in class for weeks, and are already knee-deep in theory, so you probably aren't interested in my thoughts on the first week here. Then again, you're probably to busy to read this, so I'm going to talk anyway.

The big overall surprise for me was just how much the faculty focuses on developing our economic intuitions. Apparently there's more too this economic stuff than a bunch of first order conditions. With one week down, I can say that in both micro and macro the majority of the emphasis has been on really interpreting what we're doing in an economic context. Metrics is another story, but let's stick with the first two for now.

Alvarez is teaching the first quarter of macro, and I think I can say that he is a very engaging teacher. He knows the material well, and can quickly field questions or explain things, but the real surprise was how he "sells" the concepts to us. The math is still there, but it's really refreshing to have the classes spent on developing good intuitions. Our first quarter is a quick crash course in GE theory, followed by simple OLG models, then uncertainty, then dynamics, and eventually working towards a stochastic dge growth model. Here's a link to the syllabus if you're interested: http://home.uchicago.edu/~falvare/syllabustheoryincome2006.pdf. The structure is a bit schizophrenic, but the idea is to push back some of the time series concepts until it complements with hansen's econometrics quarter. So far so good, but since we're doing GE right now, I find I'm needing to dust off the old intermediate micro textbook and remind myself about edgeworth boxes, and such.

Micro deserves an entire post. Becker and Murphy (and particularly Murphy) are amazing teachers. Again, I was surprised by how much they both focused on simple models and trying to force us to interpret the math. Although, as a side-note I wish they would frontload some more theorem/proof style lectures, just to thin the class out a bit. It turns out that this is one of the more popular courses here, so it's filled with law students, policy students, and a few ambitious undergraduates. The first day was a bit worrisome with some ridiculous questions, but the quality of class participation has actually improved drastically. I think it's nice to have a diversity of backgrounds, and I can honestly say that it may improve the class. That said, I don't want to have to arrive 15 minutes early just to get a seat.

Becker and Murphy are trading off on lectures, although from time-to-time they may team up, which is what they did on the first day. Watching the pair in action is really something. They both love what they teach, and it shows. Here's a link to the reading list http://home.uchicago.edu/~gbecker/econ301/Autumn%20Quarter%202006.pdf. So far we've really only done the very basics of defining an economy and a competitive equilibrium.

Econometrics, is well ... econometrics. The prof is very dilligent, and as far as I can tell it's pretty much a standard syllabus. http://home.uchicago.edu/~smschenn/econ310-fall06/syll06.pdf. (This one isn't linked to online) Both lectures are in one day, so it's a bit of an endurance test.

In non-economics world, I've been swimming and biking a fair amount, and hanging out with the other first years. We've got a really good class so far (26 is the final count). We'll see what happens when the pressure hits.