Recommended SFU Courses Part 1: ECON 260 Environmental Economics
For those who are majoring or minoring in Economics, two Econ 200 level courses are required. I recommend taking Econ 260 with Kevin Wainwright as one of them. If you are a student who keeps up with the homework and readings, Econ 260 might be a good GPA booster course for you.
The central idea of the course is around how government reacts to pollution from firms and how firms react to government policies. The most used method to study this idea is with math. When I say math, many of you will start to freak out and will never consider this course. It’s true that this course is math intensive, but it is very basic algebra that we learn since grade 11. In addition to the math, you will also need to do some slopes and graphs.
The way to do well in this course is you must read and understand the book. You should also attend all the lectures. Kevin’s lectures are usually just summaries of the book, but sometimes he gives example questions and shows you how to solve them. If you have a good TA, he/she might be able to help you solve most of the questions in the two assignments. This is important because the midterm and final exam questions are almost identical to the assignment questions.
I have been tutoring this course for a few months now. I have noticed that students usually do well on the midterm and assignments but they become confused about the final exam. My piece of advice: read the book and master the questions from the second assignment!