Course Guide

The Economics A Level is split up into four themes:

In Theme 1 you will study individual decision making and the operation of free markets – introductory microeconomics. You will consider the limitations of “free” markets and how the behaviour of “free” markets might be modified.

In Theme 2, you will be introduced to introductory macroeconomics in order to gain an understanding of how national economies behave and how governments implement economic policy.

Theme 3 deals with industrial organisation and business economics.

Finally in Theme 4 you will explore aspects of monetary economics and taxation as well as international and development economics.

Throughout the course you will learn that Economics is a contested subject and that there exist debates between different schools of economic thought.

You will sit three examinations:

• Paper 1 covers Themes 1 and 3
• Paper 2 covers Themes 2 and 4
• Paper 3 covers all Themes

Each examination lasts for 2 hours and comprise short answer questions and calculations, data response questions and short essays.

We have encouraged student teams to enter the Student Investor Challenge run by the London Institute of Banking and Finance and selected students have represented Tiffin in the Bank of England Target 2.0 Competition. Students have submitted work to a range of essay writing competitions and students have attended Royal Economic Society’s annual schools lecture as well as lectures at the London School of Economics.

A Level Economics does not prepare you for any specific career, rather Economics should give you a grounding for you to engage with debates and take your place as a critically aware citizen.

Lord Keynes summed up the characteristics of an economist thus:

“The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts …. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.”

If you become a master economist then Economics will lead wherever you wish to go.