Lessons Learned

Economics of the Organizations has been a very interesting course. I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I register for this class. I had not gotten any prior reviews from fellow friends or students but decided to register after reading the course description. This class introduced me to a few new concepts that I had never been presented in any of my other economics courses. The concepts that stuck out to me the most were transaction costs and our look at the Principal-Agent Model. I think I found these two concepts the most interesting because they were for easy to relate to. We have all been exposed to or used transaction costs in many aspects of our lives throughout our lifetime. This made easier to comprehend. The Principal-Agent Model was interesting to look at because the model could be used when looking at different sports organizations that I follow, all of which have dealt with different forms of conflict in relation to player’s contract, free agent signings, and between the front office and stockholders.

I am still unsure how much I enjoyed the structure of the class. It was definitely more enjoyable than a traditional lecture because the class periods were more seminar oriented. This allowed professor Arvan to tell us stories or give us examples we could relate to, making it easier to understand the concepts. The structure also allowed us to participate without feeling pressured to relay your thoughts or ideas, as well as answer questions. However, part of me likes the traditional lecture structure because those way professors teach more for the exams themselves. But, the excel homework’s did do a good job of preparing you for the exams.

I enjoyed the excel homework because it was very unique. The spreadsheets were filled with very in-depth explanation of the material we were covering. In addition, it would tell you if your answer was correct or incorrect, allowing you to make sure you properly learned that concepts instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping you were completing the assignment properly. Generally, I found most of the homework’s to be fairly straightforward, but there were a couple that fairly challenging. I would say that on average it would take me 45min to an hour to complete each assignment.

My process for blogging remained the same over the entire semester. I would set aside a couple of hours each week to come up with specific examples relevant to the prompt and complete the assignment. I actually enjoy completing the blog posts, they prompts were interesting and they helped me learn the concepts at the same time.

I would have liked to see a few more PowerPoints available to us. There were a good number of PowerPoints at the beginning of the semester but after the first exam they seemed to fall off. I felt that the PowerPoints were a great way for me to review the concepts we had covered and reminded me what theories I needed to read back over.