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Considering the fact that the first part of the HSC Economics Syllabus is called “Australia’s Place in the Global Economy”, it’s important to know changes to the economy throughout the course of the HSC year so that you have a holistic understanding of real-world applications.
This includes simple things as consistently checking either ‘Trading Economics’ or ABS for monthly statistics including unemployment and inflation rates so that when your assessments come around, you are in tune with trends and not just plain numbers.
Additionally, it is also crucial to know why these economic indicators are changing, such as low interest rates being a result of low wage and economic growth in reflection of the trade war. Some notable names that usually have interesting insights include Ross Gittins for the SMH and ‘Gregonomics’ in The Guardian.
Overall, this will make your essays stand out and also make the theoretical content easier to understand as you can see it in action.
Don’t neglect essays!
Though they account for 40% of the final exam, essays are often overlooked when it comes to economics, but from my experience, it’s much harder to get a 17 or 18 out of 20 in economics than in English or one of the Histories. Overall, essays end up differentiating students, being ‘harder’ to get higher marks than in the short answer or multiple choice sections.
To combat this, ensure to make essay plans for each topic as you go along. Questions can generally come from a rewording of the syllabus, where generally past HSC papers are a great place to find them and similar questions tend to repeat over the years.
Essays: Judgment and Paragraphs
Structurally, these essays are rather free flowing, having initial theory paragraphs, progressing into paragraphs more based on trends and real-world examples. One key booster to essay marks is having a defined judgement, remembering the fact that even though you aren’t making a formal ‘thesis’ like you would in English, you still want to address the directive term of the question throughout.
To a question such as “Evaluate the effectiveness of current monetary policy”,
My judgement (which I would state in my intro, but prove throughout the body paragraphs) would be that it is:
“Moderately effective, as though it was effective at countering major fluctuations in the past, it is currently stagnant and unable to dampen weak economic growth, especially considering the mere 1.4% GDP- lower than the GFC’s 1.7% growth.”
In terms of paragraphs, this is the order I would take:
• Theory paragraph explaining Domestic Market Operations
• Theory paragraph on the RBA’s objectives
• Briefly talk about the 1993 target band
• Global Resources Boom- a successful application of contractionary monetary policy
• GFC- a successful application of expansionary monetary policy
• 2nd wave of the mining boom to the housing boom (losing effectiveness)
• Limitation 1: time lag, expansionary MP
• Limitation 2: bring it back to current conditions- nearing below zero target
This looks like a lot of paragraphs but really these would be quite short (economics essays are meant to be easy to read) and would progress to prove this judgement- answering the ‘evaluate’ part of the question.
Notes: Concise VS Detailed?
This is a key question that comes up, where though you want to know details, you also want to be able to easily memorise these notes.
What I did was while we were learning a particular topic, I made detailed notes from both textbooks (Dixon and Riley), in order to make sure that there were no gaps in my knowledge and I fully understood the topic. But nearing trials and the HSC, I made summaries of these detailed notes- to the point where I compressed 35 pages into 4 pages and when studying for exams, these were the ones that I printed out and memorised.
These summary notes would have diagrams, tables, mind maps and dot points (also key words and definitions to help with short answers), serving as more of a refresher of your memory, rather than a way to learn something- but if I felt that I was getting rusty on a particular dot point, I went back to my detailed notes.
Consistent Multiple-Choice Practice
For me, at times, economics multiple choice was quite trippy and I had various ‘ohhh’ moments when I would look at the answers. But ways to combat this would be to practise the HSC multiple choice questions for different topics as you go along or perhaps buy one of those workbooks by Riley or Dixon that have them by topic. In this, make sure to decrease small things such as “decreases” carefully to avoid silly mistakes and also remember key formulas for the k multiplier and unemployment as those come up almost every year.
Recurrent Examples to Memorise
For the longer short answers and essays, there are a few key examples for which you can memorise specific statistics, details and critiques and are especially helpful for curveballs, making sure you have connections to the syllabus for everything.
Something that you can obviously always refer back to is the GFC- it’s literally applicable to every topic. E.g. the more common way would be to use it for economic growth, or perhaps mentioning the Fiscal Stimulus Package, but it can also be tied to labour market policies and how the flexibility of enterprise bargaining kept unemployment relatively low, and additionally, how Australia’s trade links with China, as well as the low dollar (J curve theory) left us comparatively unscathed.
Here are some examples I would always refer back to in my essays and how I would connect them to the syllabus:
• The Global Resources Boom (trade, economic growth, inflation, mining, comparative advantage, economies of scale)
• 2011 Australian Automobile Industry collapse in response to record high dollar in the 2nd wave of the mining boom (exchange rates, trade, opportunity costs)
• Trade War- markers would love this as it is so recent (trade, protectionism, retaliation effects of tariffs, economic growth, globalisation)
• Fair Work, Enterprise Bargaining, Awards (labour market, unemployment, inflation)
Good luck with HSC Economics this year!
