BCS Written Economics common mistakes
BCS Written Economics · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Writing a long descriptive answer about a market or policy without drawing the relevant diagram (demand-supply, indifference curves, IS-LM, externality wedge) or labelling its axes, curves and equilibrium points.
Candidates memorise prose from textbooks and treat diagrams as decoration; under time pressure, writing feels faster than drawing, and many have never practised producing clean, labelled diagrams from memory.
What to do instead
For each core micro and macro topic, build a one-page 'diagram card' with axes, curve shapes, shift directions and the equilibrium change. In practice answers, make the diagram the first thing you draw, then write the explanation as a commentary on it, and label every curve and intercept.
Answering a 'discuss' or 'evaluate' question with a one-sided list of benefits (or costs) and no counter-argument or judgement.
Candidates confuse explanation with evaluation and reproduce lecture notes; they also fear that stating a judgement risks being 'wrong', so they stay descriptive.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed structure: define, explain the mechanism, give both sides with a condition attached to each ('benefits hold only if supply is elastic'), then a short reasoned verdict. Practise converting every 'discuss' prompt into an explicit 'it depends on X' thesis before writing.
Using numerical data, growth rates, inflation figures or budget numbers that are outdated, invented, or attributed to the wrong year, and building the argument on them.
Candidates rely on memory of headlines and coaching-note statistics without checking dates, and exam pressure encourages confident-sounding but unverifiable figures.
What to do instead
Learn a small set of anchor facts with their year and source (for example recent GDP growth, inflation, budget deficit, remittance and export figures), and always state the year. Where a precise number is uncertain, use a qualitative statement ('moderately rising inflation') rather than a fabricated figure.
Confusing stocks and flows, or levels and rates, when discussing money supply, deficits, debt, investment and capital, leading to logically inconsistent answers.
Textbook definitions are learned in isolation, and the same word (for example 'investment' or 'deficit') carries different meanings in everyday language, macroeconomics and public finance.
What to do instead
Before writing, explicitly define each key term as a stock or flow and give its units. Add a one-line 'definition box' at the start of answers on money, debt or fiscal policy, and check every sentence for consistency with that definition.
Explaining the money multiplier and credit creation as if the central bank directly controls the quantity of money through the reserve ratio alone, ignoring the role of banks' lending decisions, currency holdings and demand for credit.
Simplified textbook treatments present a mechanical multiplier, and candidates rarely see the endogenous-money critique, so they reproduce the model uncritically.
What to do instead
Present the conventional multiplier as a stylised model with its assumptions stated, then note its limits (currency leakage, excess reserves, weak credit demand). Show how open market operations, repo and policy rates transmit through bank lending and interest rates.
Treating comparative advantage and trade policy as static arithmetic, concluding that a tariff or devaluation must improve the trade balance, without discussing elasticities, income effects or retaliation.
Candidates learn the two-country, two-good numerical example and generalise it, missing the Marshall-Lerner condition and general-equilibrium adjustments.
What to do instead
For trade questions, state assumptions, compute the opportunity-cost example, then add the dynamic and policy caveats: elasticity conditions for devaluation, J-curve, terms of trade, and the difference between comparative advantage and competitiveness.
Writing econometrics answers that describe a regression technique verbally but never state the model, the assumptions, the test statistic or the interpretation of a coefficient.
Quantitative topics are often studied as definitions to be memorised rather than as procedures, and candidates avoid equations because they feel unsure of notation.
What to do instead
Prepare a template for each method: model equation, key assumptions, estimation method, diagnostic tests, and a sentence interpreting the coefficient with units. Practise writing out a small numerical example of omitted-variable bias or heteroscedasticity by hand.
Ignoring the Bangladesh-specific context in general theory questions, giving a purely textbook answer with no application to local institutions, data or constraints.
Candidates separate theory papers from Bangladesh economy papers and do not practise linking concepts such as inflation, tax effort, financial inclusion or remittances to domestic evidence.
What to do instead
For every major theory, prepare one Bangladesh application paragraph with a mechanism and a data anchor. In the exam, end each theoretical answer with a short 'implications for Bangladesh' paragraph linking the mechanism to local institutions.
Mismanaging time and structure: spending too long on the first question, writing unplanned continuous prose, and leaving compulsory parts or the final question unanswered.
Candidates rehearse content but not exam conditions, underestimate writing time for diagrams and evaluation, and lack a pre-planned answer skeleton.
What to do instead
Practise full timed papers with a fixed minute budget per mark. Spend the first few minutes allocating time and sketching a three-part outline (definition, analysis with diagram, evaluation) for each answer, and enforce a hard stop per question.
Confusing fiscal and monetary instruments, or mixing up the roles of the Ministry of Finance and Bangladesh Bank, when answering policy questions.
Policy institutions and instruments overlap in public debate, and candidates learn definitions without mapping them to the actual institutional division of responsibility.
What to do instead
Build a two-column table of fiscal versus monetary instruments, the institution responsible, the transmission channel and the typical lag. Use it to check every policy answer for correct attribution before finalising.