Best resources to score well for IB Economics

IB Economics is a tough subject. It’s definitely not the toughest but it’s tough!

With so many theories to understand, so many graphs to digest and so many essays to write, scoring for IB Economics isn’t an easy feat.

Before getting into the resources that are out there to help you, we want to offer you some quick tips that will aid in your Economics journey.

 1.     Focus on understanding the concepts and how they work: Economics is not a subject that you can just memorise and dump. You need to take time to really grasp how the concepts work.

2.     Learn to apply the concepts: Something many students don’t realise is that understanding the concepts is not enough. You need to learn to apply them especially for paper 2. Try looking at news articles to see how what you have learnt can be used to explain these phenomena happening around the world.

3.     Practise essays: Trust us. You can’t get past Economics by just knowing and applying. Essay skills are ones that you need to develop. Practise them and get your teacher to mark them as well as tell you where you fell short. This takes a lot of time as well so start early.

Now, let’s get on with the main topic: The best IB resources.

Objectively, the top resource that a student can acquire is IB Economics in a Nutshell by Ellie Tragakes. It’s a really condensed version of the textbook that she put out and is a really great study guide students should refer to during the months leading up to the IB exam. This should be only a supplementary guide as it does not go in depth in to the concepts and does not include much of the applications as well. Thus, one should get familiar with the textbook first before depending on this book.

The next best resource is HKEXCEL on Youtube. But wait, aren’t they a competitor of ib lounge? Well, yes but what we are referring to is not their tutoring services but rather their Youtube channel. While we have not tried their tutoring services before (and thus can’t give our comments), their free Youtube channel offers some great advice too. So do check them out!

If you are looking for tutoring, you can check them out if you’re living in Hong Kong. If not, iblounge.org is another good place to check out if you’re from Singapore or around the world for online tutoring. (Wink, wink).

The power of 3 is the magical formula but we only have 2 external resources that we will really recommend. Of course, the textbook from Ellie Tragakes is also a really great resource but students may find it hard to understand the concepts without someone guiding them. Thus, it may be worthwhile to check out a tutoring service (ahem us) if you find understanding such concepts difficult.

We hope that these two resources we shared are helpful for your IB Economics journey!

All the best!