IB Economics IA: Ideas and How to Score High

Good IA ideas are specific and recent: a named firm's pricing decision, a government subsidy on electric vehicles, a real trade tariff dispute — not "unemployment" as a broad theme. The IA is marked against five criteria (diagrams, terminology, application, analysis, evaluation), 17 marks per commentary, three commentaries total.

Both SL and HL students submit three commentaries, each on a different syllabus section — one microeconomics, one macroeconomics, and one from the global economy unit (international trade, development or the environment). Each is capped at 800 words, based on an article published within roughly two years of your submission date.

According to the IB Economics guide (first assessment 2022), each commentary is marked against five criteria: Diagrams (4 marks), Terminology (2), Application (2), Analysis (4) and Evaluation (5) — 17 marks per commentary, 51 across the portfolio, weighted 30% of the final grade at SL and 20% at HL.

Each commentary has a strict 800-word limit, and examiners stop reading at word 801 — anything after that isn't marked. Word counts exclude diagrams, the bibliography and the article title/source line, but include everything else, so tight, economical writing genuinely pays off here.

Look for short news pieces (not opinion columns) from outlets like the BBC, Reuters, The Economist or a national business paper, covering a specific event — a price change, a policy, a market shift. I tell students to search for the topic plus a country and a recent year to force specificity.

No — each of the three commentaries needs its own article, and they must come from a different syllabus section each (microeconomics, macroeconomics, global economy). Using the same source twice, or writing two commentaries from the same broad theme, is a common reason moderators query a school's marking.

No single unit scores higher by default — examiners mark the quality of analysis and evaluation, not the topic choice. That said, market failure (externalities, public goods), price elasticity, and exchange rate movements tend to give students the clearest, most testable diagrams and the easiest route into genuine evaluation.

Draw it large, label both axes correctly (price and quantity, or the specific variables for that model), show the shift with a clear arrow, and reference it explicitly in your text — "as shown in Figure 1". A diagram that just sits on the page unexplained scores poorly on Criterion A even if it's technically correct.

Weak evaluation — students describe a policy's effects but never actually judge them. Criterion E rewards a reasoned argument: which stakeholder is hurt, what assumption might not hold, what a better alternative could be. Marking hundreds of these, the drop from a 6 to a 3 on Evaluation is almost always this exact gap.

Pick one or two specific angles — a stakeholder who loses out, an unrealistic assumption behind your diagram, a short-run versus long-run tension — and argue them properly instead of listing generic pros and cons. Evaluation is worth 5 of the 17 marks per commentary, so it's not an afterthought paragraph.

No — they're separate pieces of work with different rules. The IA is three short 800-word commentaries on published articles, internally assessed by your teacher. The Extended Essay is one 3,500-word research essay on a question you devise, externally assessed and worth a separate grade toward your diploma points.

Not necessarily extra resources — but many students genuinely benefit from seeing several real, marked example commentaries before writing their first one, since the criteria (especially evaluation) are hard to judge from the guide alone. RevisionPrep's Economics Revision Notes and Topical Worksheets are built around exactly these criteria, for self-study alongside school teaching.