IB Economics IA

The IB Economics Internal Assessment is a portfolio of three commentaries, one each on Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and The global economy. Each responds to a news article published no more than a year before you write the commentary. The portfolio is worth 30% of the final grade at SL and 20% at HL. The marks within it come down to a handful of skills applied consistently, and this guide covers them.

How the IB Economics IA is marked

Each commentary is marked on five criteria (A-E), for a maximum of 14 marks per commentary. The portfolio is marked out of 45: 42 across the three commentaries plus 3 for Criterion F, Rubric requirements, which checks that each article comes from a different unit, from a different and appropriate source, and was published no earlier than a year before the commentary was written. Each commentary must also use a different key concept: using one twice risks 3 marks on Criterion D, and using one three times up to 6.

Criterion A: Diagrams (3 marks). Are the diagrams relevant, accurate and correctly labelled, and fully explained? A relevant diagram that is not explained, or explained incorrectly, is the 1-mark level, and a limited explanation is the 2-mark level.
Criterion B: Terminology (2 marks). Is economic terminology relevant to the article used appropriately throughout the commentary?
Criterion C: Application and analysis (3 marks). Is relevant economic theory applied to the article throughout the commentary, with effective economic analysis?
Criterion D: Key concept (3 marks). Is a key concept identified, with its link to the article fully explained?
Criterion E: Evaluation (3 marks). Are judgements supported by effective and balanced reasoning (for example, weighing the short run against the long run, who gains and who loses, and the assumptions underneath)?

A good commentary that falls short of the top might score 2, 2, 2, 3 and 2 on the five criteria, 11 out of 14. Marks like those are usually lost to a diagram that is not fully labelled or explained, analysis that stops a step short, and evaluation that describes rather than judges.

How to choose a good article

Choosing the article decides much of what follows. A good IA article has three properties:

1. It describes a real market event with a clear cause and effect

"Government announces new sugar tax" gives you a negative externality and demerit good framework straight away. You can draw a diagram, explain the welfare effects, and evaluate the policy. Avoid articles that are purely statistical ("GDP grew 2.3% last quarter") without a policy event to analyse.

2. It connects to a single main syllabus topic

Do not choose articles that require you to use four different concepts from different units. An article about rent control in a city gives you a clean price ceiling analysis. An article about a trade war that also involves currency depreciation and domestic unemployment is too complex to analyse well in 800 words.

3. It is recent and comes from the news media

The article must have been published no more than a year before you write the commentary. It can come from a newspaper, a journal or the internet, but not from a television or radio broadcast, and each of your three articles must come from a different source. You must find the articles yourself: an article handed out by your teacher cannot be used.

IB Economics IA examples by unit

Microeconomics commentary

Strong topics: price controls (rent ceilings, minimum wage), taxes and subsidies, negative externalities (pollution, cigarettes, sugar), positive externalities (education, vaccination), price discrimination, market failure.

Example article scenario: A local government announces a $2/kg tax on plastic packaging to reduce plastic waste.

What a top-band commentary does: draws a correctly labelled negative externality diagram showing the divergence between MPC and MSC, explains the welfare loss triangle before the tax, shows how the tax corrects the externality by internalising the external cost, then evaluates: will producers pass the tax on to consumers (depends on PED/PES)? Is the tax set at the right level? And who bears the cost: does the tax fall disproportionately on lower-income households?

Macroeconomics commentary

Strong topics: fiscal policy (government spending, tax cuts), monetary policy (interest rate changes), inflation, unemployment, economic growth, the Phillips curve trade-off.

Example article scenario: The central bank raises interest rates by 50 basis points to combat inflation running at 7%.

What a top-band commentary does: draws an AD/AS diagram showing the leftward shift of AD as a result of higher interest rates, explains the transmission mechanism (higher rates → higher borrowing costs → reduced consumption and investment → fall in AD), then evaluates: time lags in monetary policy transmission; the risk of causing recession if rates are raised too far; whether supply-side inflation (caused by energy prices) can actually be addressed by demand-side monetary policy.

The global economy commentary

Strong topics: tariffs, quotas, trade agreements, exchange rate changes and their effect on trade, current account deficits, protectionism vs free trade.

Example article scenario: A country imposes a 25% tariff on imported steel to protect domestic producers.

What a top-band commentary does: draws a tariff diagram showing domestic price increase, reduced imports, consumer and producer surplus changes, and the deadweight welfare loss; evaluates the trade-off between protecting domestic jobs in the steel industry and the costs to downstream industries that use steel as an input; considers retaliatory tariffs from trading partners and the WTO implications.

Diagrams: the cheapest marks in the IA

Criterion A (Diagrams) is worth 3 marks per commentary, and a mark is easily lost here. The most frequent errors are:

Axes not labelled: Every diagram must have clearly labelled axes (Price/Quantity, or Price Level/Real GDP, etc.).
Shifts not labelled: If a curve shifts, label both the original curve (S₁, D₁) and the new curve (S₂, D₂) and show the direction of shift with an arrow.
Equilibrium points not marked: Mark original equilibrium (P₁, Q₁) and new equilibrium (P₂, Q₂) with dotted lines to the axes.
Diagram not explained in text: Every feature on your diagram should be mentioned in your commentary. A diagram that is drawn but never explained sits at the bottom band of Criterion A, not at zero.
Wrong diagram for the scenario: a supply and demand diagram for a macroeconomics article about fiscal policy, which needs AD/AS, is not a relevant diagram, and relevance is what the descriptors reward first.

Evaluation: the hardest marks to get

Criterion E (Evaluation) is 3 marks and is where many commentaries fall short. There are four reliable evaluation frameworks that work across almost any Economics article:

Short run vs. long run: The policy may have one effect immediately and a different effect over time. Rent control reduces rents in the short run but reduces housing supply in the long run as developers exit the market.
Winners and losers: Who gains from this policy and who loses? A minimum wage helps low-wage workers but may reduce employment for the most marginally employed workers.
Magnitude depends on elasticity: the size of the effect often depends on PED, PES or YED. A sin tax on cigarettes has a small effect on quantity demanded if demand is inelastic.
Limitations of the policy: Why might the policy fail to achieve its stated goal? An externality tax only corrects the market if it matches the external cost, and that cost is very hard to measure in practice.

Apply two or three of these frameworks to your specific article context and you have a developed, balanced evaluation.

Word count and structure

Each commentary has an 800-word limit, and moderators do not read beyond 800 words. Diagrams, labels of five words or fewer, headings on diagrams of 10 words or fewer, tables of statistical data, equations and calculations, citations and references are not counted. Footnotes and endnotes may be used for references only, and definitions and quotations, which must be in the body, are counted. A structure that works well:

Opening context (50-70 words): say briefly what the article is about and name the economics involved. Do not summarise the article: you are analysing it.
Economic analysis (300-350 words): Explain the economics using diagrams, correct terminology, and the relevant theory. Describe cause and effect precisely.
Evaluation (250-320 words): Weigh up the effects, consider limitations, discuss who gains and loses. Use two or three distinct evaluation points rather than one point made three times.
Conclusion (40-60 words): State your overall judgement. Is the policy likely to achieve its goal? Under what conditions?

Getting your commentary checked before submission

A familiar reaction after IA marks come back: "my evaluation was describing, not evaluating". Those marks are easy to recover if you catch them in time.

IBLens reads your commentary against the Economics IA criteria and shows which criterion is losing you the most marks, while you can still revise it. It also counts the words against the 800-word limit. Diagrams do not come through pasted text, so check each diagram's labels yourself: the report judges how your commentary explains them. Ask your teacher first: check that your teacher and your school allow outside feedback on your IA.

Paste your Economics IA commentary into IBLens for criterion-by-criterion feedback →