AQA Economics Exam Hot Topics (2025)

Overview

• Focus on revising specific hot topics for AQA Paper 1 and Paper 3 to improve your grade.
• Ensure you are still revising all topics to be prepared for any essay questions.
• This is part of a revision playlist designed to help secure top grades.

Hot Topics for Paper One

Market Failure

• Importance: Likely to feature heavily in exams.
• Focus Areas:
  • Types of market failure and policy solutions.
  • Examples in the UK and globally.
    • Childcare: Positive externalities, affordability issues.
    • Water Companies: Environmental impact from sewage dumping.
    • Vaping and Smoking: Negative externalities, tax implications, potential bans.
    • Gambling: Online gambling and its addictive nature.
    • Housing: Rent and accommodation inequities.
    • Dentistry: Access issues to NHS services.
    • University Fees: Inequity and funding issues.
    • Food Prices: Rising costs and government intervention.
    • Obesity: Potential for a fat tax.

Market Structures

• Focus Areas:
  • Perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and natural monopoly.
  • Business objectives and recent business closures in the UK.

Competition Policy

• Importance: Likely to feature strongly in exams.
• Focus Areas:
  • Regulation of inefficient market structures.
  • Current CMA interventions (e.g., vets, baby formula, energy companies).
  • Issues with big tech and monopoly power.

Labor Market

• Importance: Potential for significant essay questions.
• Focus Areas:
  • Labor shortages and wage growth.
  • Conservative party policies (benefits and bonuses).
  • Minimum wage increases and their impacts.
  • Labor market regulations by the Labor Party.

Income and Wealth Inequality

• Focus Areas:
  • Consequences and policies to reduce inequality.
  • Novel policies like wealth taxation and universal basic income.

Niche Areas to Know Well

• Focus Areas:
  • Indirect taxes, subsidies, price control diagrams.
  • Elasticities and their determinants.
  • Production Possibility Curves (PPCs).
  • Economies of scale, diminishing returns, revenue curves.

Study Tips

• Allocate an extra 10-15% of study time on hot topics.
• Continue reviewing all topics to ensure readiness for any question.
• Apply advice from this video to enhance revision and exam performance.