1. NYU one is not for PhD either. It is heard that their core course are not taught by adjunct professor which is not on the research frontier.
2. not sure about the class size of NYU, but it seems to be quite normal to have something like 100 for a normal econ master (e.g. LSE 130, NYU said 60-70)
3. Given NYU is 1.5 year........it can be even more expensive....
basically master from most famous university in US is expensive.....and it is like trade between $$ and reputation on the cert.