Mia Essay Feedback
Mia Essay Feedback
Mia Essay Feedback
Part a: A better way of starting part is to name all the factors in the first sentence rather than write
“there are many factors that can influence demand”. A better alternative would be “People’s
income level, the prices of substitutes, and consumer preferences are all factors that influence
consumer’s demand” and then have 1-3 sentences describing each one and why it can shift the
demand curve left or right. Your usage of PES to explain the difference between short and long
Part b: There is a large structural problem. IN your first paragraph after you say “producing cars
for the following reasons…” you start going into definitions for several sentences without actually
telling us those reasons. Take the information you wrote in the following paragraph in the first
sentence starting with “The use of PED can help a firm producing cars [because] when the PED is
relatively low, the firm can raise the price in order to raise their total revenue”. None of what
you’ve written is “wrong”, just very poorly structured and difficult to follow, which does matter in
AS economics essays and can result in lost points. The part about why YED is perhaps not very
Q3
Part a. Your line of reasoning is correct, but I’d like you to be more specific. In particular,
“Government may decide to increase the direct provision for it since they may be too
expensive…” add some details. For instance, we could say “They are too expensive for the
poorest citizens to afford and the ethics of that society dictate that everyone deserves access to
food/housing/education” or “They are too expensive for the poorest citizens, but their
consumption tends to have positive effects on society overall so it is a net benefit for governments
to provide these things directly”. It doesn’t matter how you rationalize it, as long as you’re being
specific.
I don’t like the way you’ve described the consequences of maximum prices; I’d omit any
discussion of maximum prices entirely unless you’re willing to spend a lot of time writing in
exhaustive detail about exactly why and how this results in further inefficiencies.
Furthermore, your discussion of why subsidies might not be effective is somewhat lacking; in fact
bureaucracy is rare in the private sector and a much simpler reasoning of “it’s almost expensive as
directly providing the good but doesn’t give government control over equilibrium quantity or price
to ensure that the poorest citizens can afford the good” might be a more effective approach.
Discussion about why subsidies might create complacency or long-run inefficiency could also be
Part b:
Good overall and only one change is required. You should discuss the long-run implications as
well (firms incentivized to leave the industry and go do something else leading to “chronic
undersupply”).
Question 2
Part a: You’re going to need to discuss other factors that can also shift the demand curve for a
product; focusing solely on the prices of substitutes isn’t enough. Also mention income, consumer
preferences, etc.
Your explanation for short run and long run is also somewhat unclear and inaccurate. Rather than
saying that there are “different factors for shifts in the demand curve in short run and long run”,
we’d rather focus just on the short and long run results of a given price change. Your usage of
substitutes here is accurate, but just needs to be reframed to something like this: “Consumers are
more responsive to price changes over the long run compared to the short run because the
availability of substitutes is higher in the long run and we allow consumers more time to change
their habits”
Part b.
Very well written. There is one part that is very unclear. This sentence “With the competitive
market, people can easily switch the idea to other cars, so that PED can help the producers to
indicate”. I’m not sure what this sentence even means; the verb “indicate” is used improperly
a. Don’t start with classifications of taxes; the question is asking for reasons why governments use
taxes in the first place and whether indirect taxes or direct taxes are “fairer”, so our first sentence
should start with “Governments impose taxes in order to…” and then “an increase in direct taxes
You mention that governments usually impose taxes to raise revenue, but recall they also
impose taxes to discourage consumption of some goods (which you mention later, this is fine
as you’ve done it) or to reduce the consumption of imports to encourage the consumption of
more domestically produced goods. You can rely on IGCSE concepts like negative
externalities here if you wish, but it is not required and you won’t be penalized for not
Your wording when describing what a progressive tax means needs to be more precise.
“Income taxes are mostly progressive taxes, which means the tax increases as people’s income
increases” This is unclear and inaccurate. To see why, imagine a society with a proportional
tax (flat tax in American English) of 15%. Somebody who makes 100k usd/yr pays $15k
usd/yr in tax, while somebody who makes 50k usd/yr pays 7.5k in taxes. In this scenario, as
the income increases, the tax also increases which fits the definition you’ve given for a
progressive tax. We need to mention specifically that the percentage of income paid in tax or
the tax RATE increases, not “the tax increases”, this is unclear and can easily apply to
Your explanation of sales taxes and why they are regressive is good.
The last area of improvement I’d like to see here is a reframing of what “fairness” even
progressive-ness of a taxation system could widely be considered more ‘fair’ (simply because
people with a higher ability to pay should pay more because it will affect their living standard
Part b:
You’ve started off good with a very direct answer to the question. This sentence is
factors influencing the prices” Re-write this to express what you mean more clearly or just get
rid of it entirely.
The rest of part B is overall well written but could use a little more focus and relation back to
the central idea that a balanced budget might sometimes prevent policy interventions to
Question 5
Part a
“Most of the time, a government would choose an import tariff instead of an import quota as a
tool of protection in international trade since they can actually earn tax revenue…” put this
sentence first, then follow it with your definitions as you’ve written them. Other than that, no
Part b
This question is very difficult for Chinese students because they are generally far more
oblivious to international politics than students in other countries. You’ve done okay with the
knowledge you have and have given a main point (comparative and absolute advantage aren’t
totally sufficient to describe real world patterns), but your support for this point is not quite
adequate. Other things we could possibly mention besides just transaction costs are
protectionism, geo-political events and tensions changing patterns in international trade rather
than just being motivated by economic growth, the inability to quantify the damage done by
job losses, the fluidity of cost and opportunity cost over time in reality, variation in foreign
exchange rates, and the uneven distribution of income gains from international trade (along
with potential income losses) potentially changing what countries desire with regard to free
trade. These are not really things we go over in class partially because most of the examples
related to China are sensitive/censored and most of my students barely know what most
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