HSC Economics Question Thread

[emilyyyyyyy]

Hi, is someone able to help explain to me how tariffs, subsidy and quota diagrams work? I just don't get them at all
thanks!

[meerae]

Hi, is someone able to help explain to me how tariffs, subsidy and quota diagrams work? I just don't get them at all
thanks!

Hey, Emily!

I would suggest looking at this website for diagram simulators which will further deepen your understanding; http://hsceco.com.au/simulators.html
I also reference them.

So tariffs are govt. imposed taxes on imports, thus, it would increase the world price of a good. When price increases, domestic demand would decrease and domestic supply would increase. You can see this on the simulation as when you increase the price of the tariff, the green line begins to move closer together.

Subsidies are cash payments from the govt. to businesses to encourage production of a g/s and influence the amount of resource allocation in an economy. If you look at the simulation, when the subsidy increases, so does the quantity supplied of the g/s. It is also good to note that the equilibrium quantity also decreases.

Quotas control the amount of goods that is allowed to be imported over a period of time. As the quota increases, supply will decrease and demand will increase, as seen in the simulation. For e.g. when the quota is at 500, the quantity supplied is 150 and the quantity demanded is 650. When the quota increases to 600, the quantity supplied is 100 and the quantity demanded is 700.

Hope this helps!
meerae

[Merry Marshal]

Hi, is someone able to help explain to me how tariffs, subsidy and quota diagrams work? I just don't get them at all
thanks!

hey girl, this site might help. https://www.economicsonline.co.uk/Global_economics/Tariffs_and_quotas.html

[Merry Marshal]

anyone know the impact of a reduction in protection on the CAD (current account deficit)? i am confusion,  please help!!!!!!!!

[Chelsea f.c.]

It depends who's protecting if it's the home country then imports will drown out local manufacturing sending money overseas and increasing cad if it's foreign country then exports will reduce cad

[henrychapman]

anyone know the impact of a reduction in protection on the CAD (current account deficit)? i am confusion,  please help!!!!!!!!

impacts would be:
more imports because it is now cheaper overseas therefore worsening the balance of goods and services and therefore worsening the CAD

[emilyyyyyyy]

hi all,

i have a really bad teacher for eco and he doesn't teach anything - i don't learn in class and for prelims, i had to teach myself the content! Do you guys have any advice for learning the year 12 content, and how difficult would it be for me to teach myself at this point in the hsc year?

thanks!

[mani.s_]

I have an economics assignment due soon and its on comparing the australian economy and one other asian economy. Its a presentation 3-4 mins. In my speech i was wondering whether or not i should start with a definition for each subslide like economic growth, quality of life, etc?

[emilyyyyyyy]

Hi all,

How should i go about studying and revising for eco, especially taking into consideration I practically have learnt nothing ...
is there any hope for me?!

thanks!

[varun.amin]

Hi all,

How should i go about studying and revising for eco, especially taking into consideration I practically have learnt nothing ...
is there any hope for me?!

thanks!

Hi Emily,

There are three main components to HSC economics in terms of exams, with each having different methods to study for. Try and focus on where you are weakest (it's easier to pick up a few extra marks in MCQ than converting a 19/20 essay to a 20/20).
-MCQ
-Short Answer
-Essays

Over the holidays I would firstly consolidate all the notes and content you’ve done up to date for economics using the syllabus dot points.With economics if you want to do well, you need to focus on understanding the concepts rather than memorising notes. HSC economics can throw different scenarios and situations at you so if you understand the concepts you can be flexible with your answers and directly answer the question. In my notes I would also note down statistics, definitions and diagrams which are all helpful to scoring well in essays and short answers and scoring full marks beyond a conceptual understanding. Also, try to understand

The next thing I would do is to go over the HSC past papers since 2010 and answer all the questions you can, each exam has a marking guidelines section which indicates which topic the section is from. After you’ve completed the exam my advice would be to mark the MCQ and Short Answer sections of the exam yourself and note down where you lost marks as these are the topics you need to revise, as well as giving the exam to your teacher or perhaps another teacher who has taught Economics at your school. Use that feedback to improve your essays and short answers. If you ever run out of past papers try and look for some online from other schools, otherwise your teacher may give you access to old ones from your school.

In terms of study guides, I found most fairly unhelpful, the only ones I really found best was the ATAR notes guide which is almost a bible for HSC economics as well as ATOMI (if the resource is available to you). If you want more detailed information on how to study for HSC economics I recommend checking out the following guides:
-https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=166446.0
-https://www.artofsmart.com.au/categories/hsc/economics/
-https://medium.com/state-ranker-manual/economics/home

[isaacdelatorre]

hi all,

i have a really bad teacher for eco and he doesn't teach anything - i don't learn in class and for prelims, i had to teach myself the content! Do you guys have any advice for learning the year 12 content, and how difficult would it be for me to teach myself at this point in the hsc year?

thanks!

Hi Emily,

Sorry for the delayed response!
Well done on learning the preliminary content, I know it is a little bit tricky to get your head around.

It is quite a usual to need to teach yourself parts of the course, I am sure that your teacher does not intend to not teach you. Have you tried to identify what exactly it is about his teaching that you aren't resonating with? If you brought this up with the teacher I am sure that he would be happy to fix it. I know that for my business studies class I told the teacher that spending too much time on just explaining definitions wasn't really beneficial and we could do more discussions about the broader issues and she took that criticism on board.

If this doesnt work, definitely talk to other teachers in that faculty or at your school.
There are also a heap of other resources out there for you, this forum for example is great for asking questions, answering questions (this really helped me during my HSC), getting essays marked etc. As well as that, there are a plethora of paid and unpaid resources including review questions/notes/tutoring services etc. that you just need to look out for.

If you are going at this alone, definitely your textbook is your bible! read that inside and out and make sure you understand all the dot points, especially the definitions for something like economics. I would also try to test yourself and try to use the content as much as possible --> i.e. doing practice questions, past papers or answering questions on the forum. ANything like this which makes you think about the content come up with an answer is great practice.

I really hope that this doesn't affect your year 12 experience and that you do pull through!
Good luck!

I have an economics assignment due soon and its on comparing the australian economy and one other asian economy. Its a presentation 3-4 mins. In my speech i was wondering whether or not i should start with a definition for each subslide like economic growth, quality of life, etc?

Hey Mani,

It really depends on what the marking criteria is, the question etc.
3/4 mins is not really much time - however i would definitely suggest having a definition for the key concepts - not for all of them.

I would suggest looking at the marking criteria and making sure you're addressing all those points in your presentation, that is gonna get you more marks than whether or not you have a defintion!

Hope this helps,
Isaac

[chelsean]

Hi,
I have a question on topic 2 for eco.
What is the relationship between the first 2 dot points
value, composition and direction of Australia's trade and financil flows to the next 3 points Australia's Balance of Payments, exchange rates and free trade and protection?

[chelsean]

Non-rural goods, in seasonally adjusted terms at current prices, rose $5.59 billion or 8 per cent to $75.3 billion. This was driven by metal ores and minerals, up $1.6 billion or 7 per cent, and coal, coke and briquettes up $989 million or 6 per cent.

Is this part talking about terms of trade? How does this impact Australia's trade?

[isaacdelatorre]

Hi,
I have a question on topic 2 for eco.
What is the relationship between the first 2 dot points
value, composition and direction of Australia's trade and financil flows to the next 3 points Australia's Balance of Payments, exchange rates and free trade and protection?

So the first dot point about trade and financial flows is related to the next part about balance of payments and exchange rates because it gives you context about the different flows australia has with the rest of the world. It's important to see how they've changed over time and realise how dependent australia is on the rest of the world.

In this way, you're able to see how the balance of payments changes and better understand how changes in economic conditions or other factors will cause changes to the different accoutns on the balance of payments and in turn how they affect exchange rates.


It's not a huge thing to know - it's sort of an underlying concept - there won't be an explicit question. but you will have to draw from both sections to answer questions.


Hope this helps.

Isaac

Non-rural goods, in seasonally adjusted terms at current prices, rose $5.59 billion or 8 per cent to $75.3 billion. This was driven by metal ores and minerals, up $1.6 billion or 7 per cent, and coal, coke and briquettes up $989 million or 6 per cent.

Is this part talking about terms of trade? How does this impact Australia's trade?

Hmm would you mind sending where this came from - it's a little hard to interpret without context about what this is talking about.

But from a glance - I am assuming that this is summarising Australia's trade for some period of time. In this case, it's talking about the composition of trade mainly how non, rural goods increased and specifically which ones increased.

Terms of trade talks mainly about the relative prices of exports and imports - since this doesn't really mention imports and is a total value it wouldn't be talking about terms of trade.

In terms of how this impacts trade, i'm not too sure since this is talking about australia's trade itself - any argument about how it's current trade influences future trade is kinda wishy washy.

But please let us know where this came from and I can try to make a bit more sense from it!.

Isaac

[chelsean]

Theoretically, does a decrease in the demand of AUD happen when China bans Australian coal? Does this cause depreciation?