Econ 183 certainly has changed a whole lot compared to previous years due to the lab requirement. The lab component made this class extremely difficult and frustrating for me. The course would have been totally fine without the use of STATA. I understand that the lab component was instituted to help students make connections between "real world data" and materials learned in the classroom. But, I would have enjoyed the class much more if I wasn't asked to use STATA to generate countless tables, graphs, and analyze data. Professor Boustan and the TAs expected too much from the students. I came into this class with a poor background of STATA because I learned jacksquat in my Econ 103 class. I struggled so much on the homework assignments because I just could not interpret the coefficients in the way they wanted all students to. With the lab component, Econ 183 places a HUGE emphasis on data analysis. If you're not a fan of this, I highly suggest you steer clear of this class.

Your overall grade breakdown in the class consists of: 25% lab assignments (6 homework assignments, including a presentation for one of them), 30% midterm, and 45% final. For the lab assignments, Boustan will provide an instruction sheet telling you how to generate data and she will ask you to submit one page of your STATA output and one page of your typed, double-spaced data analysis in response to her questions. The first half of the lab assignments were not "easy peasy", only towards the end of the quarter did the homework assignments become less-STATA intensive. For her exams, expect one of the problems to focus completely on analyzing some STATA output.

The TAs were somewhat helpful especially when we had trouble figuring out the correct commands for STATA. I just hated how we could not receive instant help from them. We were asked to submit all of our questions to the class discussion forum and had to wait until Wednesday night of each week before they would reply back. (I really hope they change this...)

Overall, the subject matter of this class was definitely interesting and relatable since it deals with the economic history of US. On the other hand, this class is no longer an "easy econ class" as many of the previous reviewers have said it would be. And, there is no curve (not even a slight one) in this class.

If you absolutely loooooooove Econometrics and interpreting data and 10 digit decimals, then by all means take this class. If you're not strong in either of these areas, I suggest you hang on to your Econ 103 textbook as a reference and/or take this course with your buddy who loves STATA.