so far my favorite teacher at ucla. doesnt spend a lot of time talking about the math, so he makes class interesting. one of my favorite teachers so far... actually, my favorite econ teacher. as for the tests, just study his study guide and practice tests, and you will get an a like i did. i didnt study the whole quarter (except for a few days before the final) and i did fine. i went to all the lectures, but didnt take any notes. my final grade was an a

His lectures are almost pointless because he posts his slides on the web, that and his lectures get repetitive. Expect to find at least 2 or 3 of the same slides from the previous lecture.

He is kinda goofy and that's good I guess, and he makes jokes here and there. The tests were fair, not hard really. The book was useless (and wrong). Only complaint I have is that he gave us 5 homeworks, 2 were graded. The 2 graded homeworks were worth 88% of the midterm.

Overall not a bad professor, especially liked how he answered e-mails pretty quickly (within a day).

Econ 102 is probably not the most fun and exciting class out there. However, I feel fortunate enough to have taken this class with Prof. Doepke, for a couple of reasons. One is that he is very knowledgable about macroeconomics and is well-versed in answering challenging questions from students. As some other students have said, he does have a sense of humor, and while I admit to having fallen asleep through some lectures (primarily because I am a morning, and not an afternoon person), his jokes do allow me to stay awake. I went to his office hours once, and he was very helpful and patient. Also, nearly everything you need to know for his exams are in his powerpoint slides. This rendered the textbook almost worthless except for those times when we did homework questions at the end of some chapters. I am glad Doepke did not make us know so much from that book, for it tend to complicate the subject and had much extraneous information. Speaking of exams, his midterm for winter '02 caught most people by surprise, with questions that seemed to pop out of nowhere. Yet, even thought many people didn't do that great on that (including myself), things turned better for me (and I'm sure for several fellow students) when the final exam rolled in. Most questions on that final resembled very much like the midterm and final review questions, and having studied off of those (and the powerpoint slides), I pulled off with the grade I wanted at the end. Lastly, about the problem sets he gave us, those assignments that involved the Excel program were indeed quite tedious. However, at the end, I am so appreciative that all that work I did in those assignments has made me much more proficient at Excel than ever before. Plus, I believe the assignments truly put what we learn in perspective. It was because of the Excel-based problem sets that I was able to see and fully understand concepts such as the Solow growth and Malthusian models. And, I liked the fact that some of the questions in the problem sets involved real-life examples, so you get to see what the economic conditions in various parts of the world have been like. Overall, I'd say that Doepke is a very good professor, and one that I would take again if I had the chance.

I've taken many econ classes here at UCLA, and by far, Doepke's class has been the MOST boring class ever. All he does is read from his powerpoint slides, so at any give time, about half the class is sleeping. His midterm was extremely difficult, but his final was more fair. His homeworks were long and tedious, and most of them were irrelevant for the exams. To do well on the exams, you have to memorize long equations and know how to do basic calculus and tedious algebra. I would say that although I did well in his class, I did not learn that much at the end.

I thought he was one of the most down-to-earth econ professors around. I mean, he rides a motorcycle to work! Other than that, he's pretty funny too. He's very smart too...probably one of the smarter econ professors at school. He doesn't throw any surprises on the exam. He assigns homework every other week (beware! the homeworks that are graded are worth quite a bit of the overall class grade...I believe he graded 2 of the 5 problem sets. the 2 graded sets were worth 44 each of the possible 100 points in the homework section which is worth 25% of the course grade) (hope that made sense). He is very technology savvy, and loves to assign excel projects in the homework sets. He is a very young professor, but he's comfortable in front of a 300 person lecture hall. The material of the class was very microoriented and very mathematical. He doesn't spell out the implications of the material, you must do that on your own time. Overall, good class. I think I pulled an A.

very technical class, lots of long equations, but if you can memorize the models and write them out before the exams you're bound to do well.

his grading is fair and you learn much more than you think if you take a second to understand that there are concepts hidden underneath all the math.

plus he's a good guy and will work with you.