How to Write an IB Economics Evaluation Essay

Economics evaluation essays are often regarded as one of the most difficult assessment components of the IB Economics program. Students often struggle with structuring their evaluations and applying their economic knowledge to the question. However, evaluations do not need to be difficult and students often overcomplicate their thinking when writing evaluations. In this guide, we will examine first, the wrong way to approach evaluation essays and then how to correctly structure an evaluation. For this, we will use this question to demonstrate the essay writing process:

“Evaluate the extent to which a depreciating exchange rate may benefit or harm an economy.”

The wrong way

Many students adopt this approach when writing evaluation essays:

1. Define

2. Descriptions and analysis

3. Evaluate

Evaluation should not be the “icing on the cake”. Rather, the evaluation should be the cake itself. Writing an economics essay using the above approach can easily lead to the mistake of describing everything about a depreciation and leaving only a small part of the essay for evaluation.

The next problem is that, when reading this type of essay, essay writing service reddit it is unclear as to what the student is evaluating until near the conclusion. As the student, it’s also easy to get sidetracked.

Some students using this approach may often run out of time and not do any evaluation whatsoever, which will make earning even a 6 difficult.

Finally, this with this approach, it is difficult to effectively tackle different types of economics essays. With the approach in this guide, evaluations can be tackled almost systematically which means that less thinking time is required, leaving more precious writing time.

Note: This approach can work and I’m sure there are students who have scored 7s with this approach. But it is much more difficult to learn if you are unfamiliar with economics evaluations. What I recommend, is to use a systematic strategy and structure that can be applied to almost all types of essay questions.