52 Economics Extended Essay Topics and Ideas for IB Students

To write a comprehensive extended essay in Economics, you first have to brainstorm topics, identify an area to explore within the scope of the project, and focus on your report.

Ideally, IB requires you to choose a topic for which you can apply economic concepts and theories to address a specific research question.

By establishing value for a topic in microeconomics, macroeconomics, or the global economy, you stand the chance to write a good essay that scores an A.

In this post, we share some Economics extended essay topics to help you get started with brainstorming.

These ideas help make topic selection process easy, so you don’t have to spend much time on finding an economic area to explore. Or you can use our extended essay writing service to hire a writer to help you with topic selection and writing.

Economics Extended Essay Topics

IB doesn’t put any restriction on which Economics extended essay topic to choose, meaning you can investigate an idea that falls within your personal interest.

However, the topic you choose should allow you to demonstrate a clear application of economic theories to real-world situations.

Your essay can focus on microeconomics, macroeconomics, and global economy. Other subcategories worth exploring are international trade, environmental economics, managerial economics, social economics, and financial economics.

An extended essay in microeconomics requires primary research in the form of interviews, surveys, or questionnaires with businesspersons.

Topics that focus on macroeconomics and global economy require secondary sources in the form of data extracted from statistical databases, newspapers and online articles, peer-reviewed papers, government publications, and historical records.

Microeconomics 

1. What is the connection between advertising on television and the expansion of a business? 
2. What kinds of ethical considerations should be made when it comes to marketing in the context of economics? 
3. How does the investment of commercial capital influence the growth of an economy in a particular nation? 
4. What kind of consequences does it have on the manufacturer when consumers boycott their goods? 
5. Should the duration of the typical workweek be increased for all employees? 
6. What are the contributions that unions make to the growth of the economy? 
7. How do we enhance the workforce so that we can raise the amount of items that we produce? 
8. What factors contribute to shifts in a given economy throughout time? Alternatively, what factors contribute to economic expansion? 
9. Whether or whether a market failure exists, and what form it takes 
10. Competition monopolization possibility 
11. Interference from the state in free market pricing 
12. Promotion's function in a free market economy 
13. To what extent do externalities have a role in the economic decisions made by consumers and producers? 
14. The impact of public goods on private industry 
15. The impact of taxes and subsidies on the economy 
16. The optimum amount of production for companies in a sector 
17. What causes market pricing for a product or service to fluctuate 
18. Efficiency against fairness: the market economy's trade-off 
19. The market mechanism through which prices for products and services are set 
20. Exactly what function do banks serve in a free market economy?

Macroeconomics 

1. Consider the macro economy and conduct an analysis of the United States in 2007 (during the Great Recession) from that vantage point. 
2. Is there any correlation between homelessness and the national economy? 
3. How do variables like inflation, GDP, tax rates, and consumer spending affect the U.S. stock market? 
4. Review the role that various macroeconomic factors play in the expansion of a country's economy and the impact that these variables have on that expansion. 
5. What impact has the COVID-19 epidemic had on economies throughout the world? 
6. Among the macroeconomic variables, which one do you think would have the most effect on a particular sector? 
7. Does the price of oil have any bearing on a country's gross domestic product?  
8. Analyze the causes and effects of inflation in the United States from a macroeconomic viewpoint.

Global Economy 

1. In what ways do customers who have loans put themselves at danger of experiencing a financial crisis? 
2. Can a country be made to abandon its offensive policies or practices by use of economic sanctions? 
3. Is it more likely that countries would use dialogue to settle territorial conflicts rather than resorting to war? 
4. Does first-world countries benefit from third-world countries' debt? 
5. Is there a level playing field for developed and developing nations in international trade? 
6. How might a developing nation's economy be stimulated most effectively? 
7. When it comes to fostering democracy and peace, how effective are free markets and free trade? 
8. Is the upside of greater foreign investment enough to outweigh the downside of international capital flows? 
9. How much do you think wealthy nations' aid can do to alleviate poverty in the developing world? 
10. In light of China's recent extraordinary economic development, what place will it play in the global economy?

International Trade 

1. Is it fair for countries to erect trade barriers against one another to shield their nascent industries? 
2. The globalization of the information technology sector and its ramifications for society and politics 
3. Slavery of the human body in third world countries because of globalization 
4. How reliant are scientific advancements and economic expansion on the accumulation of capital?

Environmental Economics 

1. Examining the infrastructures that provide data on a country's agricultural progress 
2. Urban planners in Dubai came up with ingenious strategies to construct a metropolis in the middle of a desert. 
3. What elements are most important to the retail productivity of cities?

Managerial Economics 

1. What steps can the government take to boost employment in order to improve the state of the economy? 
2. What causes certain countries to develop quicker than others do? Or, why do certain nations have significantly higher income levels than others? 
3. Why do we see these things happening in this country? Or, how does the organizational make-up of a country influence its economic output? 
4. What effect do you think cryptocurrency will have on national economies?

Social and Financial Economics 

1. The rise of the freelance workforce and its effects on national economies throughout the world
2. Is it possible for a country's bankruptcy to bring on a financial crisis?
3. In the field of economics, what do you think is the most effective technique to safeguard sensitive information?