Professor Oleg does his best to make the material he teaches relevant to real life. This has helped me understand the news on exchange rates which is very relevant as someone who lives close to the Mexican border. I enjoyed attending lectures as Oleg is a funny lecturer and cares about his students. I would highly encourage students to take this class. One tip is to start the problem sets as soon as they are posted as they are weighted highly into your grade and can be a bit challenging. I would definitely take this class again.

Overall this is a great class for anyone interested in international finance. 30% of the grade is 3 problem sets, 30% is midterm, and 40% is final. The class topics were sequenced: national account (GDP, GNI, etc), current account, current account with investment, current account with risk and uncertainty, exchange rates (nominal, real, PPP, pegs and floats, monetary model), and terms of trade.

Overall, Itskhoki is a great lecturer. He sometimes goes a bit fast but he makes sure to engage with students during his lecture and he's a funny guy. He also makes sure to bring his expertise in these areas to lectures by constantly connecting theory to real world applications and assigning 3 or 4 interesting (but really tough to understanding) readings that are very topical. The material was very hard - it often takes rewatching parts of lectures a couple times to fully conceptualize this stuff. The problem sets are typically ~3 questions with ~5 parts in each, you work in a group to complete it, and they took me many many many hours to do and a lot of stress, but they were the prime way to actually fully understand the material. The midterm and final were short response questions. He emphasizes understanding the material conceptually and being able to apply theory rather than just memorizing equations.

I highly recommend this class if you're interested in international finance, trade, and macroeconomics - its confusing stuff at first, but a great intro to these subjects if you put in a bit extra work to understand it all, especially if you're interested in graduate school.

Oleg is incredibly passionate about the field of economics and has conducted a lot of research on it himself. If you have interest in getting a masters in economics, this is a great class for you. If you do not have interest in a masters in economics, then this class is horrible. The topics are very advanced and frankly are too much for the undergraduate level. He really does care a lot and will be willing to help you through it, but that doesn't distract from the difficulty of the concepts taught. Do not take this class as an easy econ upper div, it isnt one.

I literally love Oleg. Well not literally bc isn’t that illegal? Theoretically then? idk, but he is an awesome prof with the best Russian accent in the world (don’t worry, he’s super easy to understand, it’s just really dope). I actually wanted to go to lecture because when he’s not fully in lecture mode he’s funny. His lectures made sense because he cares enough to go super in depth about the mechanisms behind the math. He also only tests on the mechanisms behind the math which saved my ass more than once because you know I got lost when I saw gamma in lecture. He’ll make sure you know the math part through the problem sets only. There are 3 psets, you have a week to do them, and they’re not too long, and they're pretty difficult but you can work on them in a group. The tests were super fair, short answer, and there was actually enough time to do the problems (!!!).

Just go to lecture and take notes. I think I wrote down every single word he said by going to lecture live and then watching it again to catch anything I may have missed. It served me well.

If I'm being 100% honest, I know readings were assigned but I didn't have time to do them. To my knowledge, it didn't affect me at all... I guess I'll update this when I receive my grade.

I’m glad to see the econ dept is stepping up and finally adding profs who know how to actually teach. I would recommend this class to a friend. I'm not even an econ major and I was beyond nervous for this class but this renewed my interest in the subject somehow.

This class is tough, and there are no numbers; it's purely theory. Oleg is a nice guy but his slides and notetaking style is extremely difficult to follow. You have to be extremely in-tune with what he's saying in order to keep up, sometimes rewatching lecture videos multiple times. He gives very little time to introduce new material, and instead immediately jumps into the applications. He assigns multiple scientific papers that are very difficult to decipher, and will take hours to read. The problem sets are intensive, graded on correctness, and take a lot of time to complete, but they prepare you well for midterms. If you really enjoy developing the thought behind economics/finance, this class is for you - Oleg has a wealth of knowledge and is willing to accommodate you. For people looking to find an easy, low-effort elective, I'd avoid.