A-Level Economics Revision

My 7,000 hours of professional tutoring taught me one thing above all: you must measure what you don’t know to accelerate your learning. The research agrees. Psychologists call the sweet spot just beyond what you can currently do on your own the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) — it is where learning happens fastest, and the only way to find yours is to be tested. The classroom research says the same: Black and Wiliam’s landmark review of more than 250 studies found that formative assessment — finding out what a student doesn’t know, then teaching to exactly that — produces learning gains among the largest ever reported for an educational intervention (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Dylan Wiliam, Embedded Formative Assessment, 2011). Everything on this page works that way round — play first, get diagnosed, then study exactly what you got wrong. Why be a passive scroller when you could be an active learner solving questions? I always found — revising at Oxford, where I won three prizes in economics and the best mark in the year in Game Theory, and tutoring well over 145 A-Level economics students one-to-one — that figuring out what you don’t know first is absolutely critical to maximising the fun, enjoyment and productivity of your economics learning.

Test your diagram knowledge

The diagram is the model — and economists always look at the world through the lens of a model. Every chain of reasoning in every essay is built by reading one. That is why you want to check your diagram knowledge and make sure it is strong.

Every diagram, every corner lettered. Each one has a game that tests every point and area — every wrong answer gets a diagnosis — and a study page with the game’s questions answered on the diagram. Organised the way the course is taught: Year 12 and Year 13, microeconomics and macroeconomics.

Year 12 Microeconomics

• Supply & demand equilibrium
• Shift in demand
• Consumer & producer surplus
• Indirect tax
• Subsidy
• Maximum price
• Minimum price
• Negative production externality
• Positive consumption externality
• Positive production externality
• Negative consumption externality
• Production possibility frontier
• Shift in supply

Year 12 Macroeconomics

• AD/AS equilibrium
• AD shift right (with the multiplier)
• AD shift left (recession)
• SRAS shift left (cost-push inflation)
• LRAS shift right (long-run growth)
• Keynesian LRAS (spare capacity)
• Laffer curve
• Loanable funds (crowding out)
• PPF outward shift (economic growth)
• The Macro A-Level game — AD/AS and the macro objectives, tested question by question. Played by hundreds of students.

Year 13 Microeconomics

• Monopoly (supernormal profit)
• Perfect competition (short-run profit)
• Monopsony labour market
• Kinked demand (oligopoly)

Year 13 Macroeconomics

• Free trade at the world price (imports)
• Tariff
• Import quota
• Currency depreciation
• Currency appreciation (hot money)
• The J-curve
• Lorenz curve

Every question, answered

All 197 diagram questions on their own pages — each with the answer explained on the lettered diagram.

More ways to test yourself

• Map A-Level Economics diagrams — the question-to-diagram diagnostic.

More revision tools are added here over time — check back.