IB Economics

Prerequisite

There are no prerequisites for this course.

Course Description and Aims

The IB Economics course aims to provide students with a core knowledge of economics, encourage students to think critically about economics, promote an awareness and understanding of internationalism in economics and encourage the student's development as an independent learner. Alongside the empirical observations of positive economics, students of the subject are asked to formulate normative questions and to recognise their own tendencies for bias.

The course is designed to:

encourage the systematic and critical study of human experience and behaviour; physical, economic and social environments; and the economics and development of social and cultural institutions,
develop the capacity to identify, analyse critically and evaluate theories, concepts and arguments about the nature and activities of the individual and society,
enable students to collect, describe and analyse data used in studies of society; test hypotheses; and interpret complex data and source material,
promote an appreciation of the way learning is relevant to both the culture in which the student lives and the culture of other societies,
develop an awareness that human attitudes and beliefs are widely diverse and that the study of society requires an appreciation of such diversity,
enable the student to recognise that the content and methodologies of the subjects in group 3 are contestable and that their study requires the toleration of uncertainty.

Curriculum Model Overview

Component

Standard Level

Higher Level

Unit 1: Introduction to economics

What is economics?
How do economists approach the world?

✓
✓

Unit 2: Microeconomics

Demand*
Supply*
Competitive market equilibrium
Critique of the maximising behaviour of consumers and producers
Elasticity of demand*
Elasticity of supply*
Role of government in microeconomics
Market failure – externalities and common pool or common access resources*
Market failure – public goods
Market failure – asymmetric information
Market failure – market power
The market’s inability to achieve equity

✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓

Unit 3: Macroeconomics

Measuring economic activity
Variations in economic activity – aggregate demand and aggregate supply
Macroeconomic objectives*
Economics of inequality and poverty*
Demand management (demand side policies) – monetary policy*
Demand management – fiscal policy*
Supply-side policies

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

Unit 4: The Global Economy

Benefits of international trade*
Types of trade protection*
Arguments for and against trade control/protection
Economic integration
Exchange rates*
Balance of payments*
Sustainable development*
Measuring development
Barriers to economic growth and/or economic development
Economic growth and/or economic development strategies

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓

✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓
✓

✓
✓

*includes HL only sub-topics

Assessment at a Glance — Standard Level

Type of Assessment	Format of Assessment	Time (hours)	Weighting Final Grade (%)
*External*		3	70
Paper 1	An extended-response paper based on all four sections of the syllabus.	1.25	30
Paper 2	A data-response paper on all four sections of the syllabus.	1.75	40
*Internal*			30
Portfolio	A portfolio of three commentaries.		30

Assessment at a Glance — Higher Level