Economics

What this covers

• Opportunity cost, trade-offs and production possibilities curves, including reading points inside, on, and outside the curve
• Drawing and shifting supply and demand curves: identifying the determinant that shifted, the direction, and the new equilibrium price and quantity
• Price ceilings, price floors, surpluses and shortages, and predicting who gains and who loses
• Elasticity of demand and supply: estimating it from substitutes, necessity and time, and linking it to what happens to total revenue when price changes
• Market structures compared — perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition — using number of firms, barriers to entry and price-setting power
• Macroeconomic indicators: calculating GDP by expenditure, distinguishing real from nominal, using CPI to find an inflation rate, and computing the unemployment rate
• Fiscal versus monetary policy: which tool addresses recession or inflation, and tracing the chain from interest rates to spending to output

Where learners get stuck

Confusing a shift of the demand curve with a movement along it

Students hear 'demand went up' used loosely for both cases. The rule — only a change in the good's own price moves you along the curve, everything else shifts it — has to be applied out loud on specific examples (a coffee price rise versus a rise in tea prices) before it becomes automatic.

Treating opportunity cost as the money spent rather than the next-best alternative given up

Everyday use of 'cost' means price. In economics the cost of an extra hour studying is the shift you did not work, which involves no money at all. Free-response answers lose marks when students list a dollar figure instead of naming a specific forgone option.

Assuming rising prices means everyone is worse off, or that a 2% inflation rate means prices fell if it drops to 1%

Inflation is a rate of change, not a level. Falling inflation still means prices are rising, just more slowly. Students also forget that wages and nominal values move too, so real values need adjusting before comparing across years.

What a session looks like

A session runs as a spoken conversation, usually 25–35 minutes. Evelyn will pose a scenario — a drought in coffee-growing regions, a minimum wage increase, a central bank rate cut — and ask you to talk through the curve that shifts, the direction, and the effect on price and quantity. You are asked to keep paper nearby to sketch axes and curves, then describe what you drew; Evelyn checks your labelling and reasoning from that description. Numerical work such as CPI calculations or unemployment rates is done step by step aloud, and definitions are pushed for precision rather than accepted in rough form.

Helpful to know first

• Comfort with percentages and percentage change, since inflation, elasticity and unemployment all rest on it
• Reading and plotting points on labelled axes, and understanding what a curve's slope represents
• Basic algebra: solving a linear equation and finding where two lines intersect, for equilibrium problems
• Some familiarity with real-world markets and news terms like recession, interest rate and tariff, though these are also explained as they arise

Questions

How does economics work in a voice-only session if the course is full of graphs?

You draw on paper and describe it. Evelyn asks what is on each axis, which curve moved and which way, and where the new intersection sits. Explaining a diagram aloud is close to what written free-response answers require, so the practice transfers.

What is the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics at this level?

Micro covers individual markets, firms and consumers — supply, demand, elasticity, market structures. Macro covers the whole economy — GDP, inflation, unemployment, and fiscal and monetary policy. Most 9th–10th grade courses spend a semester or a unit block on each, and sessions can focus on whichever unit you are in.

My child mixes up fiscal and monetary policy constantly. Can that be fixed?

It is usually fixed by anchoring each to who acts and what they change: the legislature and executive change taxes and government spending, the central bank changes interest rates and the money supply. Sessions drill this by giving a policy action and asking which category it is and what effect it should have.

Does this include personal finance topics like budgeting, credit and taxes?

Yes, where the course includes them. Many state economics requirements attach a personal finance strand covering compound interest, credit scores, insurance and reading a pay stub, and those can be covered alongside the micro and macro content.