Essay competition season – advice for economics students

I know a lot of economics students are now writing their essay competition entries.

With that in mind, what’s an effective approach to writing an economics essay?

Let’s imagine your essay competition question was about whether the government should tax demerit goods.

This is a type of question that tends to appear every few years and examples include sugar taxes, cigarette taxes and alcohol taxes.

Starting with A Level Economics

I would suggest students start by writing a set of notes for the topic.

This could begin by considering the economics they know. What does A Level or IB Economics tell you about the question? Use this as the basis for creating your initial notes on the topic.

In the case of taxing demerit goods, we know from A Level Economics that:

• Taxes can reduce the extent of overconsumption, correcting market failure.
• Taxes raise prices and can lower consumer surplus and producer surplus.
• Elasticities, such as the PES and PED, will influence the effect of taxes.
• As well as many more insights including on related goods, costs, government revenue and other responses by consumers and producers.

Bringing academic backup – reports and papers

Next, try to find reports on the topic. These could be from governments, think tanks, consultancies or researchers. Not only for the facts and statistics to support your essay, but also for deeper economic theory or unexpected economic effects of each policy.

For example, here is a report on sugar taxes from the World Bank.

For those who want to study economics at a top university and really want to push themselves, consider reading academic papers. You can use a search engine such as Google Scholar to find economics papers on a topic of your choice. An example of this is here on cigarette consumption. Then integrate the economic research into your essay.

A tip for reading academic papers: the particular economic theory or regression methods can be difficult to understand for A Level Economics students.

So, at this stage, consider just reading the abstract, introduction and conclusion to begin with. Very often, the key facts to understand will be in those first and last sections. If the paper sounds relevant and interesting, then feel free to dive into it more at that point. However do not worry if you do not understand this part.

Get into the policy details

A bonus tip for discussing economic policy, in A Level Economics but especially in essay competitions, is to think about how the policy is designed. For a tax for example:

• At what level should the tax be set?
• Should the tax apply at certain concentrations or only to certain types of goods? For example, should a sugar tax exist only for drinks reaching a minimum amount of sugar per 100 ml?
• Should the amount of tax paid vary with the quantity? This could include varying the percentage of the price paid in tax.
• What should the government do with the revenue raised?
• Should the policy design take into account its impact on inequality?

These more subtle but very important policy details could make the difference between a poorly designed policy and a very effective one.

Bringing it all together

Once you’ve done your research, ask yourself what the key themes of your research are. This will enable you to structure the essay.

Importantly, I suggest giving your own informed opinion. Take what you have learnt from the literature and form your own view. Where does the balance of the evidence lie? Is there even a novel idea, outside of the literature, that you could bring to the policy design?

While using academic literature can help, it is important for students to explain it simply, concisely and in their own words.

I also recommend students read winning essays where they are available. This gives you an idea of how to do well and what examiners may be looking for.

For those taking part in the economics essay competitions this year, good luck!

Disclaimer – please kindly note that tips cannot offer a guarantee of doing well in a competition. Other factors will also matter for economics essay competition success. I recommend reading sample winning essays from the competition you’re entering.

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