teaching

My overall mean teaching evaluation comes in at 8.57/9, with a median of 9/9; the latter held pointwise until 2018. I am occasionally asked to provide more motivation in tying economic themes together.

• details UNC ECON 510: Advanced Microeconomic Theory Offered 5 times

  sessions offered

  • Fall 2020 (mean 3.17/5; median 3.00/5)

    "Kyle was a great teacher who clearly is very intelligent, but the format of the class this semester was not conducive to any type of learning whatsoever."
    
    Ed. note: Oof.

  • Spring 2019 (mean 4.20/5; median 4.00/5)

    "Now I find myself in a class where I excitedly talk to my peers and family about topics from lecture over dinner about what I'm learning, completely unprompted."

  • Fall 2017 (mean 3.90/5; median 4.00/5)

    "He tried his best."

  • Spring 2017 (mean 4.70/5; median 5.00/5)

  • Fall 2015 (mean 4.38/5; median 5.00/5)

    "As a student who isn't particularly interested in microeconomics, I enjoyed this class quite a bit. Professor Woodward's inclusion of real world applications of game theory and auctions (i.e.: NRMP) made the class much more useful and much more interesting. He obviously cares very much for his students and was willing to make changes to the course to benefit the class."

• details UNC ECON 701: Analytical Methods for Mathematical Economics Offered 6 times

  sessions offered

  • Fall 2020 (mean 4.00/5; median 4.00/5)

    "I thought Professor Woodward tried his best to maintain a 'classroom' setting via Zoom – he obtained (or had) a whiteboard in his home that he set up really close to the camera, letting him explain theorems and write out proofs step by step, which was really helpful to me."

  • Fall 2019 (no evaluations)

  • Fall 2018 (no evaluations)

  • Fall 2017 (no evaluations)

  • Fall 2016 (no evaluations)

  • Fall 2015 (no evaluations)

• details UNC ECON 890: Contract Theory Offered 2 times

  sessions offered

  • Fall 2019 (no evaluations)

  • Spring 2019 (no evaluations)

• details UCLA ECON 201C: Welfare Economics Offered 1 time; notes available

  course notes

  • Auctions (with BNE)

    Auctions with finite types, as well as all-pay auctions with continuous types. A brief example of Bayesian Nash equilibrium taken from Essential Microeconomics; Batman.

  • Single crossing and PBE

    Perfect Bayesian equilibrium and single crossing; numerous worked examples of old comp questions with perfect Bayesian equilibrium (and related concepts) and some quick incentive compatibility.

  • Incentive compatibility

    Incentive compatibility, with ties to the intuitive criterion. Optimal package pricing. Many questions from Essential Microeconomics.

  • Auctions and ironing

    Optimal auctions, ironing, the meaning of ex ante, interim, and ex post. Worked exercises regarding the construction of optimal auctions.

  • Mechanisms and VCG

    Optimal auctions, designer-optimal mechanisms, Vickrey-Clarke-Groves. Mostly a potpourri of questions, with a couple throwbacks; basic common-value auctions sprinkled in.

  • The appropriation principle

    The alignment of social benefit with individual incentives to simultaneously achieve efficiency and incentive compatibility; implications for monetary transfers and the designer.

  sessions offered

  • Spring 2011 (mean 8.37/9; median 9.00/9)

• details UCLA ECON 201A: Microeconomics Offered 1 time; notes available

  course notes

  • Production, assets, and insurance

    A definitional approach to production; “baby asset-pricing”; a handful of very simple forms of insurance and what they imply about insurer profits.

  sessions offered

  • Fall 2011 (mean 8.56/9; median 9.00/9)

    "Kyle is the best TA. He was always available and responsive, came prepared, and thoroughly answered questions."

• details UCLA ECON 106D: Market Design Offered 1 time; notes available

  course notes

  • Uses of revenue equivalence

    Solving an all-pay auction without the revelation principle, using revenue equivalence to compute strategies, order statistics and their applications.

  sessions offered

  • Spring 2013 (mean 8.82/9; median 9.00/9)

    "One of the best econ TAs I've had. I hope you become an econ professor somewhere awesome."

• details UCLA ECON 101: Microeconomic Theory Offered 2 times; notes available

  course notes

  • Nitty gritty introduction to game theory

    Dominance, Nash equilibrium, sequential games, and mixed strategies with an application to where Shabnam and I should go to dinner.

  • Extensive-form games

    An extensive-form game with a light take on knowledge; should I grade problem sets or just give everyone a C?

  • Centipede games

    Centipede games as an introduction to game theory (this quarter we started with SPNE); an illustration of a situation in which backward induction is irrelevant and how it breaks.

  • Mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium

    Why mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium is a necessary concept; how to find mixed-strategy equilibria; the relationship between mixed- and pure-strategy Nash equilibria in terms of the total number of equilibria.

  • Hotelling's game[s]

    An apology for a botched attempt to discuss Hotelling's pricing game (which has no apparent Nash equilibrium, as Hotelling's original paper discovered), followed by a simple coverage of Hotelling's location game.

  • Discounting and repetition

    A brief discussion of the counterintuitive implications of the standard cops-and-robbers formulation; wherefore, future discounting; repeating the ultimatum game with alternating offers and passage of time; a simple recursive approach to Rubinstein bargaining.

  • Cournot and Stackelberg competition

    Examples of Cournot and Stackelberg competition models, with an extensive discussion of when the first mover wants to use its power to keep the second mover out of the market.

  • Price discrimination and price competition

    Price discrimination, club cards, and a nonstandard price competition setup to illustrate how competitive equilibrium has explicit strategic implications.

  • General equilibrium

    The production possibility frontier, an exchange economy, and a general equilibrium problem with a corner-case production function which is linear in both capital and labor.

  sessions offered

  • Fall 2012 (mean 8.65/9; median 9.00/9)

    "[...] Hope Kyle will teach econ here as a professor soon."
    
    

  • Winter 2011 (mean 8.23/9; median 9.00/9)

    "List of top 5 people I want to be: (1) Derek Jeter; (2) Johnny Depp; (3) Andy Roddick; (4) Michael Burry; (5) Kyle Woodward"

• details UCLA ECON 41: Statistics for Economists Offered 3 times; notes available

  course notes

  • Conditional probabilities and Bayes' rule

    Optimizing cereal selection; whether or not Bigfoot exists.

  • Bayes' rule

    A version of the standard “medical test” example to illustrate the application of Bayes' rule and marginal probabilities.

  • PMFs

    The martingale betting strategy; investments; multiple-choice quiz layout. (solutions)

  • Convergence and PDFs

    Convergence of the sample mean to the true mean; maximizing likelihood; where PDFs come from. (solutions)

  • Conditional distributions

    Law of iterated expectation; aptitude versus performance; a taste of identification; can Burger King make you healthy? (solutions)

  • Confidence intervals

    Should a TA move office hours, given an email survey of his students? Are bike lockers at UCLA well-maintained? Confidence intervals are found both constructively and via formulae.

  • Hypothesis testing

    A wordy description of hypothesis testing as an interpretation of confidence intervals, with an application to which bus I should take to get home in the evening.

  • Review questions

    Questions which variously hit every topic covered in introductory statistics (including combinatorics, counting, and basic probability) through a single example of student final exam scores.

  sessions offered

  • Winter 2013 (mean 8.60/9; median 9.00/9)

    "You sir are a BEAST!"
    
    
    Ed. note: I happen to enjoy pepperoni pizza.

  • Winter 2012 (mean 8.51/9; median 9.00/9)

    "Phenomenal job. Honestly the most comprehensive TA I have ever had. You would make one of the best professors this school offers. Good luck and thank you for the time you put into your precision and care."

  • Fall 2010 (mean 8.27/9; median 9.00/9)

    "Kyle was really clear. He was effective, straightforward, and super helpful. He also gave us cookies, which in no way influenced my evaluation. Seriously, though, he was really good. Give him a raise, because he really works hard to make us learn."

• details UCLA ECON 97: The Economic Toolkit Offered 1 time

  sessions offered

  • Summer 2013 (no evaluations)

• details UCLA ECON 11: Microeconomic Theory Offered 1 time; notes available

  course notes

  • Why microeconomics?

    Why do we care about microeconomics? The (classical) notion of choice and preferences; the existence of utility and why numbers don't matter. Indifference and common utility functions.

  • The consumer's problem

    Choice constrained by a budget; the structure of constrained optimization and some solution methods; issues of corner solutions and a high-level perspective of the Inada conditions.

  • Expected utility

    The definition of expected utility for simple lotteries; actuarially-fair pricing and its implications, with an application to the optimal selection of building material for a pig facing a wolf; demand functions, defined.

  • Welfare effects

    The expenditure-minimization problem, applied to computing change in consumption due to wealth (income) and substitution (price) effects; a pretty decent graphical depiction.

  • Corner solutions

    A recapitulation of why marginal utility per unit price matters; where corner solutions come from.

  • The production possibility frontier

    Lecture notes on efficient production across firms, the marginal rate of technical substitution, and a simple linear example with burgers and fries; apologies to France.

  • Edgeworth boxes

    General equilibrium in two-agent economies; solution algorithms for the same; Pareto optimality; solution algorithms for the same; proof that I can draw things by hand; how to construct an Edgeworth box if you have a piece of paper that rotates.

  sessions offered

  • Spring 2012 (mean 8.67/9; median 9.00/9)

    "Kyle balls out. He's the man. Best TA I've ever had. Thanks, homie."

• details UCLA ECON M134A: Environmental Economics Offered 1 time

  sessions offered

  • Summer 2011 (no evaluations)