IB Economics: The Foundations of Economics

When students first ask what economics is all about, I always find it tricky not to give a very long answer. It’s the same when starting to plan those induction lessons in economics: what will help them to understand the base principles of the subject but also develop an awareness of the economist’s mindset? At IB, the Foundations of Economics section of the syllabus sets out what to cover quite nicely. I've shared a few useful resource links below.

There are some useful student clips answering the question ‘what is economics’ at the why study economics website, you could of course get second year students to give their own answer, or create their own videos

A series of short videos and interviews produced by the Economic and Social Research Council around the question ‘what is social science about’ are especially good for the ‘economics as a social science’ section. There are also some useful text book style fact sheets that set out the basics of the subject and some nice topics for induction, such as money and happiness.

The series starts with an animated clip that explains the ‘social science method’ and the value of economics

Here’s a nice one for model building. Geoff has blogged about this before, but I still enjoy using Bill Phillips’ Keynesian machine that illustrates the circular flow of income quite literally.

For the brave, there’s a great poster available on the ESRC site: where would social science be without maths… There’s a very helpful set of revision links to common problems, such as algebra, graphing and indices on the Studying Economics website that will no doubt prove useful for IB Paper 3 and the new A level specification.