What are some actually good/interesting econ classes that aren't a giant waste of credits

Im a big fan of econ but every course outside of micro,macro, econometrics is trivial and a massive waste of money in terms of the marginal benefit gained from the content since everything after the econ core is repetitive and boils down to demand and supply, marginal benefit analysis, income/substitution effects and incentives but just applied to different topics/fields. This is not to say they are not interesting, they are just not worth the money since you do not learn anything ground breaking, rather just apply old tricks to new content.

Having said that, the only course I think is worth while in the economics department is international trade since I think the theory of comparative advantage is non trivial, actually very interesting and flexible enough to be applied to almost any economic topic, and its not touched upon in great detail in any of the honours core courses.

Oh and history of thought with Watson. That class is major fun. you get to read all the econ classics like wealth of nations, road to serfdom, theory of moral sentiment, bits of marx's , Humes and Aquinas work and some other really cool but not so well known works like that one about the bee hive (forget its name). Its an honours level class but you dont require any advanced math.

Outside of that, I would recommend any econ course that teaches the time value of money and similar finance topics, something similar mgcr 341. I think theres an econ course like that. could be wrong.

TL;DR: dont ever take a course with Cairns. Now that is a waste of a course.

/r/mcgill Thread