Rafey cares a lot about this topic and applying economic theory to environmental problems. He had some interesting lectures with a couple of cool case studies, however, the class was entirely based on the midterm and final which sometimes only had one or two true/false questions relating to those case studies. The rest of the tests were on micro/macro econ questions you might see in 101 or 102 based on environmental problems, and it helped a lot to study prior tests/problem sets of his to prepare. I thought this class was interesting, but lectures did get dry at times as Rafey is a young prof who may not have a ton of experience teaching undergrads. I would also recommend taking advantage of office hours in this class as it helped a lot to understand some of his more complex problems he gives on homework/tests. I would only recommend it if you are interested in the intersection of environmental policy and economics.

I liked going to lecture in the beginning of the quarter because Rafey is really passionate about the subject (and attractive). The class was weird for me, the slides didn’t really show you how to do the math that was on the exams. Also he only recorded his voice and didn’t zoom record the lectures. But I felt that the lectures were unnecessary because it was not exactly related to the exams, I felt really lost ngl. I just studied based off of the problem sets and the previous year exams. His exams were open book and open internet so that was cool and really helped. There were also a lot of really long research papers that you had to know for the exams to include in the answers (or appeared in the t/f questions). The format of the exams were also all short answer and no multiple choice. Your grade is made up of Three problem sets (10%), Two midterm exams (35%), Final exam (55%). He HEAVILY curved the class, so that was good but I was bored of the subject and wouldn’t take it again.