Eco HL November Exams

[Ibhappy]

So it has been 24 hours.... THOUGHTS?

Most people at my school thought the papers were harder than may. Particularly as there was no theory of the firm on p1!!!! That was sneaky. And p3 much more difficult than May session

Do you agree? Do you think the boundary will shift ?

[viceandvintage]

I was soooo thrown off by paper 1.That paper would have been a SL paper.

I wrote a Macro answer for a Micro paper so I don't even know if I'll get any marks.

Also the question they asked on CPI is normally found in bloody paper 3, so I botched that and wrote some crap.

All in all my paper 1 was HORRIBLE. It would be a miracle if I passed.

But thank the Lord,

Paper 2 was good, quite easy, if you studied you'll do fine.

Paper 3 was SUPER EASY! I was so happy because it was supped to be my weakest paper.

You just needed to know a few formulas and be familiar with your textbook, no practice needed at all.

Thank God there were no calculations of tax or tariffs or whatever like that....

There was no theory of the firm ANYWHERE, except for paper 3 where they asked law of diminishing returns and stuff like that but there was NOTHING about market structure.

IB is obviously being sneaky....

[Ibhappy]

Paper 1 I thought was different, although not nevessarily very difficult as the questions were quite broad, but bummer about theory of the firm coz I knew that so well

Paper 2 yeah again not too bad, although I feel like people won't have used the graphs/diagrams supplied in their answer, and why else would they be there??

Paper 3 was so much harder than may though! At least may had simple supply demand and tax calcs/ diagrams,,.

[ib-dying]

Paper 1 was okay and so was paper 2 except I didn't really like the articles, espcially the trade ones didn't give much choice in my opinion.

Paper 3 TOTALLY threw me off. It was so much harder than May and since there are basically no practice exams for it, it was so unexpected

[yuu]

Paper 1 - questions were very BROAD (i.e discuss why govt may impose indirect tax) and very odd as there were no questions about theory of firm -- totally got trolled.

Paper 2 - I found this the trickiest out of all 3 papers. Especially definition of business confidence - I don't recall ever learning how to "define" that. And also, I talked about business confidence in part (d), wasn't exactly sure if the analysis was right.

Paper 3 - IT WAS TOO EASY. Especially the calculations. Basic math. But i'm afraid the grade boundaries for a 7 would be really high.

Edited November 8, 2013 by yuu

[zxcvbnm]

There were two things I was hoping for. Firstly a theory of the firm/monopoly question (I truly thought this was a given, if you looked at any past paper there was one) and a linear demand/ supply question in paper 3 like may. Of course this was not the case so I'm not sure how I went.

[WTF is IB]

I didn't practice any paper 3. just learn some formulae and seriously paper three was i think a bonus mark for me x)

However, paper one i guess i didn't score as much as i wanted. I was so ready for macro and micro, but i didn't revise what came out. I was like seriously? CPI? i had no idea. won't even get 5 marks for this question!

and paper 2.... what did you guys answer for those who chose japanese one and MNC ??

[yuu]

I didn't practice any paper 3. just learn some formulae and seriously paper three was i think a bonus mark for me x)

However, paper one i guess i didn't score as much as i wanted. I was so ready for macro and micro, but i didn't revise what came out. I was like seriously? CPI? i had no idea. won't even get 5 marks for this question!

and paper 2.... what did you guys answer for those who chose japanese one and MNC ??

For the japanese yen devaluation/depreciation of overvalued currency (is it?) - for part d), i just picked out what the said benefits would be (i.e exporters like the mentioned ones would increase exports blah), and what other countries said about it (e.g depreciation war thing?)- forming my discussion for advantages and disadvantages. Conclusion was that they shouldn't depreciate. I added about business confidence as advantages but i wasn't sure if i discussed it correctly.

For MNCs, is it about FDI?

I wrote benefits like tax revenues, increase in employment of LDCS...

and disadvantages like repatriation of profits (hence not much income benefit), the tax revenue wouldn't be that large an amount, exploitation of workers... So of course conclusion was no FDI.

[WTF is IB]

oh **** i think i messed up the paper completely. Can you check if its good. I didn't understand the japanese part. i thought there currency too high, they had a high exchange rate. so ive put the adv of having a high exchange rate like downward pressure on inflation. So interventionist to devalued would help exporters etc.. but protectionist measures agaisnt then coz exchange rate too low. (i dont really remember)

I didnt understand what overvalued was, i thought there currency was revalued but too high.

What do you need to score a 7? Is the boundaries too high? I think for IA i got 40

[yuu]

oh **** i think i messed up the paper completely. Can you check if its good. I didn't understand the japanese part. i thought there currency too high, they had a high exchange rate. so ive put the adv of having a high exchange rate like downward pressure on inflation. So interventionist to devalued would help exporters etc.. but protectionist measures agaisnt then coz exchange rate too low. (i dont really remember)

I didnt understand what overvalued was, i thought there currency was revalued but too high.

What do you need to score a 7? Is the boundaries too high? I think for IA i got 40

Overvalued just means that the yen is set at a value higher relative to its equilibrium free market value.

I don't really remember already too! Hmm... actually we sort of have the same points, right? JUst that it might be phrased differently. (Advantages of having a high exchange rate = disadvantages of depreciating the currency!!)

It really depends on the question, if the question was phrased 'consequences of having an overvalued currency' and 'consequences to depreciating the overvalued currency', the answers would be phrased differently... I honestly can't remember already.

For May 2013 to get a 7 was 78 i THINK? (And usually nov might be higher... yikes)

Edited November 9, 2013 by yuu

[Samster]

In all honesty, I found the November paper a lot more difficult than the May Paper

Micro in Paper 1 was an absolute disaster- I felt like I had to avoid the Sustainability question because I felt like I couldn't write enough about it. Macro was slightly better because I actually quite like CPI and inflation.

Paper 2 was so-so for me. I ran out of time so I failed to evaluate my 2nd question properly (I did the India and HDI one)

Paper 3 was a lot easier than May in my opinion but I was surprised at how there was no Market Failure or Theory of Firms in Paper 1.

I'm really worried about the scaling!

[sharlottstar]

I was actually pretty relieved with this year's paper.

Paper 1 was such a godsend to me as I was so hoping there would be no theory of the firm (because I'm a bad HL student and didn't really spend much time on it) and I thought the questions were quite good.

Paper 2 was alright overall. No surprises really.

Paper 3 was easy-ish but I was sad there was no straight forward linear demand and supply equations Of course that would've been just way too nice of the IB to give.

Overall, I'm hoping for a 6.