IB guides

Syllabus Requirements

• Definitions of a social science and economics
• Definitions of microeconomics and macroeconomics
• Definitions of growth, development, and sustainable development
• Positive and normative concepts
• Ceteris paribus

• Scarcity
  • factors of production: land, labour, capital and management/entrepreneurship
  • payments to factors of production: rent, wags, interest, profit

• Choice
  • utility: basic definition
  • opportunity cost
  • free economic goods
  • production possibility curves: definition
    • diagrams showing opportunity cost, actual and potential output
    • diagrams showing economic growth and economic development

• Rationing systems
  • basic economic questions
    • what to produce?
    • how to produce?
    • for whom to produce?
  • mixed economies
    • public
    • private
    • central planning versus free market
    • economies in transition