can be difficult to know what a full marks a level economics essay really looks like throughout my tablet stick form I never truly trusted my teachers marketing with some mocking way too leniently and others mocking way too harshly in this video I'm going to take you through a full marks economic essay for my exams last year hopefully this way it will give you a good idea of what a full marks a level economic essay really looks like for a bit of proof for those of you that may be a bit skeptical here's the marketing sheet for my actual exam and as you can see on the final 25 marker I got 25 out of 25. so this was the 25 marker I chose for this particular exam and as you can see the question reads evaluate whether the best way to reduce inequality in disposable income is to reduce differences in pre-tax incomes rather than through taxes and Welfare benefits now the first thing to know as you can see my question paper is that my handwriting in the exam is pretty bad and handwriting is actually something that concerns quite a few students so I just want to let you know there's actually not really something to be concerned about you can look how dodgy my handwriting is here obviously you're rushing in the exam and you can see that the examiners were still able to mark okay pretty well well as my handwriting is pretty shocking and I really doubt most you'll be able to read it what I'll do is read aloud my answer so starting off with my introduction reducing differences in pre-tax incomes refers to measures such as reducing wage differentials and labor market discrimination producing inequality through taxes and welfare payments refers to a more progressive taxation system and a larger Financial cost to the government this essay will argue that reducing differences in pre-tuff incomes is more effective as it doesn't distort incentives and allows individuals and households to work for their wage so pretty standard introduction nothing really that special here what I've done is kind of highlight the main points of the question pre-tax income versus post-tax income and then talk about what I will argue in the essay and genuinely this is all you really need to do in introduction the finally key terms discuss the key points and set out what your essay will argue now moving on to my first paragraph one way that inequality could be reduced by reducing the differences in pre-tax incomes could be by the government providing Education and Training schemes this would be individuals in the labor force an opportunity to improve their skills and education as a result it is likely to increase the productivity of workers which in turn will improve workers MRP as of demand for labor is derived from an individual's MRP this policy would increase the demand for workers who have attended and benefited from such schemes as a result the wage rate would increase and the quantity of workers employed would also increase this will lower the gap between High income and low-income workers hence reducing the differences in pre-tax incomes oh a very very basic Point here to start off my essay and honestly probably at the time I was just panicking and kind of writing the first thing that came to mind as you can see there's really no evaluation in this point and it's actually not a great of a point but this proves a point that not all your paragraphs need to be perfect you can do some basic points for some basic classes to get yourself started in these essays in the exam so now moving on to my second paragraph another measure that could be used to reduce differences in pre-tax incomes would be policies to reduce labor force discrimination a short-term solution would be implementing quotas which has been done in Sweden these quotas mean that a company has to employed a certain number of individuals from a certain group in a certain position for example a certain number of women need to be employed in managerial positions this would help increase the income of women and hence help reduce the income inequality a long-term solution will be changing social norms within the work environment for instance if more women became CEOs of 3100 companies this could change the Norms of other companies you may then let go of their prejudices and discrimination again a very basic Point bringing in some knowledge and Analysis for no real evaluation but again I'm just getting the ball rolling at the start of this essay now it's my third paragraph which really brings in the evaluation to the first two paragraphs so continuing on however both of these policies may be limited in terms of how effective they are firstly there's a large financial and opportunity in cost incurred to the government for providing Education and Training schemes it could be argued that there were better uses for government time and money moreover quotas in the labor force could lead to an inefficient allocation of resources as it can result in individuals being placed in roles they are not qualified for it could also result in individuals missing out on positions they are qualified for in addition to this there is no guarantee that low income and low MRP workers will attend the schemes provided for them frankstones it may be that they are not incentivized to increase MRP due to binding rationality and hyperbolic discounting to combat this the government can make attendance to Education and Training schemes mandatory however individuals may feel as interesting votes on their individual freedom and liberty hence this is likely not to be effective so this paragraph had kind of really saved my first two paragraphs my first paragraphs they're good I've done some knowledge and some analysis but I haven't really done any evaluation whereas this paragraph is just flooded with evaluation of those first two points and now this evaluation is really the key to getting those full marks in these essays evaluate loads and evaluate your evaluation what I mean by a lot as you can see I've evaluated by saying maybe these schemes won't be effective because people won't attend and then what I've done is I've evaluated that evaluation I've said well maybe we can make it so they have to attend and I've almost a further and I've said well let's look at this is likely to occur well people may think it invokes on individual Freedom so this is not likely to be effective I've really gone deep on that evaluation and that is the key to being successful in these essays now move on to like four paragraph where I go on to talk about reducing income inequality post income so this is going to be talking about tax systems alternatively reducing income inequality could be achieved for a new more progressive taxation system for instance a taxation system which increases the tax rate for the top bans and reduces the tax-free income EG from 12 500 pounds to 15 000 pounds as you can see that makes no sense I meant to say increasing the tax free income but again you're in the exam you're stressing you're rushing and the examiners know that so they're not really going to discredit you for making a silly mistake like that in the exam so don't worry about stuff like that this way the government will still receive the same or similar amounts in tax revenue but a disposable income of low-income groups and households will increase however this policy may not be as effective as it first seemed the Laffer Curve in Figure 1 shows why this may not be the case if the tax rate was initially T1 with a tax revenue of tr1 then increasing the tax rate may actually lead to a decrease in the tax revenue this is shown as T2 is based on T1 the tr2 is less than tr1 the first reason for this is that increasing the tax rate for high income earners is likely to increase the rate of tax avoidance the second reason is due to brain drain this is where higher income earners may choose to move abroad to a location where the tax rate is lower Hank's natronium received by the government would be lower it is possible that this could worth it inequality as high income earners are more likely to be owners of businesses brackets entrepreneurs if they decide to move abroad they will move their businesses with them this is more likely to happen nowadays in a more interconnected and globalized World economy this would decrease domestic employment opportunities and individuals may lose their income Hanks worsening income inequality furthermore this policy would expend government resources as the increased tax avoidance and tax evasion would have to be regulated by the government so again I've made my point and I've just tried to do loads of evaluation so my point was why we've changed taxation system and basically all my evaluation flat systems around the left curve it says well if we increase tax that may not actually lead to an increase in tax revenue and there may actually in reality be negative knock on effects to the low-income groups we're trying to help anyway now moving on to the next paragraph income inequality could be reduced by increasing welfare payments these refer to payments perceived by low-income groups directly from the government however welfare payments also have a large financial and opportunity cost to the government as the money used could have gone elsewhere in addition to this it could be argued that the increased welfare payments could distort incentives individuals and households May no longer have the incentive to improve their MRP and seek a higher wage as they become dependent on welfare payments as you can see the examiner would have liked a bit more evaluation they said depends on this is so true I should have done more evaluation here but again this isn't really came to me in the end so continuing on reducing differences in pre-tax incomes is likely to be more effective in the long run than taxes and welfare payments is because trading schemes allow individuals to increase their MRP which would increase their wage for instance if a different political party were to be elected the Taxation and Welfare payment schemes may be eliminated slash watered and inequality would return to what it was originally however if there was a change political party or an external economic shock those who have developed the skills thanks improving that mrps will still be earning a higher wage and have a larger disposable income in addition to this policies reduce differences in pre-tax incomes are more effective as they are more Equitable and hence also more direct for example only individuals that take action and attend trading schemes reap the benefits similarly it is fair and Equitable to reduce labor market discrimination whereas taxes and welfare payments treat everyone the same which could be seen as unfair such inequitable this paragraph is kind of like a mini conclusion to my conclusion and I think it starts off with some pretty well focused evaluation but by the end I'm kind of drifting talking about fair and equal when that's not really that relevant I don't think and I think the question marks on my essay kind of show that but nonetheless this is still good evaluation I'm adding to my essay to bring it up into those higher bands pushing towards those full marks and now finally my conclusion to conclude the best way to reduce inequality in disposable income is to reduce differences in pre-tax incomes rather than free taxes and welfare payments this is due to the fact that it is more Equitable and fair encourages work over welfare and doesn't distort Market incentives whereas taxes and Welfare benefits May encourage laziness where individuals no longer have any desire to improve their MRP they also carry large costs in the form of government financial and opportunity costs brain drain and tax avoidance so this conclusion all I do is summarize what my points are saying I've summarized the why I think one is better than the other and explain that briefly not adding anything new but rather than just summarizing the points I made throughout my essay so that was it and the examiner viewed that as a 25 out of 25 Mark essay as you can see they left a comment saying a very comprehensive response covering all three methods with clear analysis good use of economic Concepts and supported evaluation throughout and that is all you need to get 25 out of 25 in an essay again this is far from perfect I'm sure a lot of you are looking at this thinking I'd write something like that or I could write something better than that and it's true and you can you have to remember writing an essendon exam is very different to writing essay at home for homework here we've only got 35 40 minutes the stress has a big clock in front of you ticking down Etc but a way to get better at least is just doing them in time conditions but the main point here is that it's not perfect I made spelling mistakes I made silly mistakes not all my points were like great but again it was good enough and that's the main point you only have to be good enough to get those top marks so that's the end of the video I hope you've really enjoyed it what I meant to say was that I've also got other responses showing full Mark essays as well as full marker sponsors to 15 markers nine markers four markers Etc so please let me know if you'd like to see some videos of me going through those answers myself again massive thanks for watching and I'll see you soon