IB Economics: Stress-free teaching, engaged and successful students

IB Economics
Unit 1: Introduction to Economics

This section of the IB Economics course provides us with an overview of economics as a social science, quickly differentiating between the two main branches of economics – Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. Economics is essential about the problem of choice in a world of scarce resources and how we can address this problem. This topic also looks at the ways economists can approach the world, looking at key economists and scholls of economic thought.

Introduction to IB Economics

The  Introduction to Economics section of the IB Economics course covers the following topics:

What is economics?

Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. 

Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, in real estate, business, finance, health care, and government. Economic analysis is sometimes also applied to such diverse subjects as how countries can develop and improve their economic well-being, crime, education, the family, law, politics, religion, social institutions, war, science, and the environment.

Introduction to Economics

Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing "what is", and normative economics, advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics; between rational and behavioural economics; and between mainstream economics and heterodox economics.

In any economy, the existence of limited resources along with unlimited wants results in the need to make choices. Different types of economies determine which goods and services to produce, how to produce them, and to whom to distribute them.

What is microeconomics?

Microeconomics analyses basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. For example, firms sell goods to households, and households provide labour.

WHAT IS MaCROECONOMICS?

Macroeconomics analyses the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements.

The difference between micro and macro economics

Schools of economic thought