ENVIRON 134
Environmental Economics with Data Analysis
Description: Lecture, three hours. Requisite: one course from Economics 41, Life Sciences 40, Political Science 6, Statistics 10, 12, 13, or other statistical analysis course approved by instructor. Examination of challenges of balancing environmental protection with wants and needs of people in economy. Focus on how to design efficient public policies that meet environmental goals. How to quantify cause-and-effect relationships, for example, between pollution and infant mortality, using non-experimental data. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2019 - Barreca did not seem to care about student learning. When students had brought up concerns in class, this instructor said her opinion was a minority opinion and said his vote counted for 81 voices whereas hers was just one. Although I don't think his comment were meant to offend, it was clear to me that he did not care about the student learning experience and the rest of the quarter seemed to prove this as well. Barecca on the first day of class had told us he would teach us like we had no prior experience in R, economics, or statistics which I don't think was reflected during the quarter. The only part I felt was taught well and from the basics was R, which was the responsibility of the TA anyway. Furthermore, for our final project, we were expected to know codes we had not yet learn in class. I understand Barecca had the intentions of being a great professor and was modeling the style of a certain teacher he had mentioned, however the quarter did not mirror his intentions. Therefore, I felt if multiple students had brought up concerns and feedback about his teaching styles, he should have considered them. Additionally, I understand wanting students to learn from experience, from trial and error, so I understand his emphasis on examples. However, I believe a certain amount of basic concepts must be taught in conjunction. Barecca taught primarily through examples and students were left to their own devices to figure out trends and concepts based on examples. I believe it would have been more effective if he had taught basic concepts and given us examples to apply our knowledge with. For example, in my past physics classes, professors taught us concepts in class with a few examples, and gave us many practice problems of varying difficulty to work with. I have never been in a class where I tried to learn by merely observing trends in the way the professor solved problems. I was very disappointed in this class especially since I was looking forward to it last quarter and over break. Even if Barecca wanted to teach through examples, I would have appreciated if he had assigned mandatory textbook readings or education videos to supplement the learning so we could learn about the concepts on our own time. I don't agree with Barecca's emphasis on intuition because it made many of his explanations confusing and hard to follow. In addition, when students had asked for further clarification on questions, he would attempt to explain based on intuition or phrases like "move this block of wood" which to this day is unclear and confusing to me. Most of the articles we read for homework were interesting but were but were used as applicable examples in class and again, still lacked the basic concepts we needed to understand everything. I consistently felt throughout the quarter that I had no knowledge of the basic concepts. I really do not recommend this class for anyone. I did end up getting an A- in the class, but really the students in the class had to teach each other.
Winter 2019 - Barreca did not seem to care about student learning. When students had brought up concerns in class, this instructor said her opinion was a minority opinion and said his vote counted for 81 voices whereas hers was just one. Although I don't think his comment were meant to offend, it was clear to me that he did not care about the student learning experience and the rest of the quarter seemed to prove this as well. Barecca on the first day of class had told us he would teach us like we had no prior experience in R, economics, or statistics which I don't think was reflected during the quarter. The only part I felt was taught well and from the basics was R, which was the responsibility of the TA anyway. Furthermore, for our final project, we were expected to know codes we had not yet learn in class. I understand Barecca had the intentions of being a great professor and was modeling the style of a certain teacher he had mentioned, however the quarter did not mirror his intentions. Therefore, I felt if multiple students had brought up concerns and feedback about his teaching styles, he should have considered them. Additionally, I understand wanting students to learn from experience, from trial and error, so I understand his emphasis on examples. However, I believe a certain amount of basic concepts must be taught in conjunction. Barecca taught primarily through examples and students were left to their own devices to figure out trends and concepts based on examples. I believe it would have been more effective if he had taught basic concepts and given us examples to apply our knowledge with. For example, in my past physics classes, professors taught us concepts in class with a few examples, and gave us many practice problems of varying difficulty to work with. I have never been in a class where I tried to learn by merely observing trends in the way the professor solved problems. I was very disappointed in this class especially since I was looking forward to it last quarter and over break. Even if Barecca wanted to teach through examples, I would have appreciated if he had assigned mandatory textbook readings or education videos to supplement the learning so we could learn about the concepts on our own time. I don't agree with Barecca's emphasis on intuition because it made many of his explanations confusing and hard to follow. In addition, when students had asked for further clarification on questions, he would attempt to explain based on intuition or phrases like "move this block of wood" which to this day is unclear and confusing to me. Most of the articles we read for homework were interesting but were but were used as applicable examples in class and again, still lacked the basic concepts we needed to understand everything. I consistently felt throughout the quarter that I had no knowledge of the basic concepts. I really do not recommend this class for anyone. I did end up getting an A- in the class, but really the students in the class had to teach each other.
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2017 - Environmental economics has to be the one higher elective that will help your GPA in the Econ major. The professor always explained rather well in lectures and her exams were always a step harder than her homework assignments. You will struggle a bit to get the hang of the class and many of the terms from Econ 11 and Econ 41 will pop-up here and there. There is nothing harsh about the class, but you need to make sure that your mathematics and economic theory are at least up-to-date. Take the class and ask questions if you ever need advice on the weekly assignments since you can always get together with a group of people and attack the questions. The group assignment is super easy--I think 1 page about a topic of your choice--and will not take up too much of your time. The professor is hard to get a hold of because of her extremely tight schedule, but you should navigate around that fact, and I am sure you will get to speak to her at some point in the quarter.
Summer 2017 - Environmental economics has to be the one higher elective that will help your GPA in the Econ major. The professor always explained rather well in lectures and her exams were always a step harder than her homework assignments. You will struggle a bit to get the hang of the class and many of the terms from Econ 11 and Econ 41 will pop-up here and there. There is nothing harsh about the class, but you need to make sure that your mathematics and economic theory are at least up-to-date. Take the class and ask questions if you ever need advice on the weekly assignments since you can always get together with a group of people and attack the questions. The group assignment is super easy--I think 1 page about a topic of your choice--and will not take up too much of your time. The professor is hard to get a hold of because of her extremely tight schedule, but you should navigate around that fact, and I am sure you will get to speak to her at some point in the quarter.
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2023 - Maybe I am different from most of the students, I am not really like this professor. He will curve but not round up 0.1 ever. He never replies emails after the final exam, and usually in rude or confusing words, like " I told this balabala" instead of Yes or No. Recording has a blurry quality, too.
Winter 2023 - Maybe I am different from most of the students, I am not really like this professor. He will curve but not round up 0.1 ever. He never replies emails after the final exam, and usually in rude or confusing words, like " I told this balabala" instead of Yes or No. Recording has a blurry quality, too.
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