What is Economics? Imagine that the world was nearly all one ocean with just one small island; there are two people living on the island and one banana plant. How do we decide who gets the bananas that grow on the banana plant? That’s Economics; it’s deciding who gets the bananas! In a world with unlimited wants and scarce resources it is an unfortunate reality that some individuals are excessively wealthy and obtain vast amounts of resources and others are excessively poor and attempt to survive on the minimal resources that they have access to. This is an infinitely complex course that will challenge the way you view the world giving you a new insight into many aspects of life and enabling you to think like an economist. Some of the topics we explore in Year 12: Microeconomics: •The problem of unlimited wants and scarce resources • How markets work which considers the interaction of supply and demand • The failure of markets – where consumers over or under consume goods such as alcohol or vaccinations. • The role of the government in tackling market failure through taxation, prohibition, regulation and price controls. Macroeconomics: • Essentially here you will learn about how a whole nation’s economy is managed; the goal would be that you complete Year 12 with the ability to manage a nation’s economy! • You will consider economic growth (GDP), inflation (CPI), inequality (Gini Coefficient), the balance of trade, budget deficit/surplus, unemployment. Some of the topics we explore in Year 13: Microeconomics: • We expand on your learning from Year 12 by exploring in detail the different market structures: monopoly; oligopoly - including the mathematical model of game theory; monopolistic competition; perfect competition. • We consider the economics of labour markets. Macroeconomics: • We expand on your learning from Year 12 by exploring the global economy where we learn about poverty and inequality and the policies that may be used to promote development of a nation to bring its citizens out of poverty,