Lebanese Baccalaureate - Economics & Sociology (SE) common mistakes
Lebanese Baccalaureate - Economics & Sociology (SE) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Computing GDP by summing all sales/final expenditures without netting out intermediate goods, so the same bread is counted at the mill, the bakery and the shop.
Candidates memorise 'GDP = sum of production' and treat every transaction as value added; the value-added vs. final-expenditure distinction is never drilled with a numerical example.
What to do instead
Before adding, ask of each figure: 'is this a final good or an input already inside another figure?' Practise three 5-line exercises converting a sales table into value added (output minus intermediate consumption) and check the total equals the expenditure total.
Mixing up a movement along the demand curve with a shift of the demand curve when a price of a related good or income changes.
Students see 'price' and 'change' in the same sentence and default to movement; the causal variable (own price vs. other determinant) is not isolated first.
What to do instead
Underline the variable that changed before drawing anything. Rule: only own-price changes move you along the curve; income, tastes, prices of substitutes/complements and expectations shift it. Redraw both cases side by side for the same good.
Calculating elasticity and then misreading its economic meaning - e.g. calling demand inelastic because the coefficient is 'small' when it is computed as a positive number, or confusing elastic with 'steep'.
The formula is applied mechanically with sign errors and no link back to revenue or pricing consequences; elasticity is treated as arithmetic rather than a decision tool.
What to do instead
Always state the sign convention and the magnitude band (|E|>1 elastic, <1 inelastic, =1 unit) in words, then answer the follow-up: 'what happens to total revenue if price rises?' Practise one case where demand is elastic and one inelastic and predict the revenue direction.
Describing perfect competition and monopoly as 'good' and 'bad' markets instead of comparing their structural assumptions (number of firms, product homogeneity, entry barriers, price-setting power, long-run profit).
Textbook labels get moralised, and the exam asks for comparison of mechanisms; candidates substitute value judgements for the analytical criteria.
What to do instead
Build a four-row comparison table (number of sellers, product, entry, price control) for each structure before writing. Answer 'which assumption fails and what follows' rather than 'which is better'.
Confusing the multiplier's direction and size - treating a rise in the marginal propensity to save as raising the multiplier, or omitting the first-round autonomous spending.
The formula k = 1/(1−c) is memorised without the underlying geometric series, so the inverse relation between saving and the multiplier is lost.
What to do instead
Derive k once by hand as 1 + c + c² + … for c = 0.8, then compute total income change for a given investment. Check: higher c means larger k; higher saving propensity means smaller k. Verify the first-round injection is included in the total.
Describing monetary policy without stating the transmission channel and the instrument - e.g. 'the central bank lowers interest rates to reduce inflation' with no link from policy rate to credit, demand and prices, and no distinction between policy rate and market rates.
Headline phrases are recalled from news; the causal chain and the institutional actor (central bank vs. commercial banks) are not rehearsed.
What to do instead
Write the chain explicitly: instrument (open-market operations / reserve requirements / policy rate) → intermediate target (money supply, short rate) → transmission (credit, exchange rate, asset prices) → final objectives (price stability, growth). Name who does what in each arrow.
Confusing the budget deficit with the public debt, or treating a balanced budget as necessarily contractionary without considering the multiplier and the state of the cycle.
The two are both 'government money' in students' minds; the stock-versus-flow distinction and the cyclical versus structural balance are rarely practised.
What to do instead
State the definitions in one line each (deficit = annual flow; debt = accumulated stock). Then answer with the multiplier: a balanced-budget increase in spending can still be expansionary because taxes leak less than the spending injects. Classify a given budget as structural or cyclical before judging it.
Reading the balance of payments as a single account and treating a current-account deficit as automatically 'bad', without noting the offsetting capital/financial account and the role of the exchange-rate regime.
The identity (current + capital + financial = 0, up to reserves) is not internalised, so surpluses and deficits are judged morally rather than as accounting counterparts.
What to do instead
Always write the identity first and force the counterpart entry: a current-account deficit is financed by capital inflows or reserve loss. Then ask whether the deficit reflects strong import demand from growth or weak export competitiveness before evaluating it.
Answering Lebanese development and unemployment questions with generic theory (Phillips curve, aggregate supply) and no reference to the specific structural features - sectoral composition, remittances, dollarisation, informality, the post-2019 crisis.
Revision is built from international textbooks; the Lebanese case is treated as an illustration rather than the object of analysis the exam expects.
What to do instead
Keep a one-page 'Lebanon sheet' of structural facts and mechanisms (service-heavy economy, remittance dependence, high informality, currency and banking crisis, emigration of skilled labour) and practise attaching each to the relevant theory. In essays, name the mechanism, not just the label.
In sociology answers, describing a phenomenon (e.g. falling fertility, rural migration) and then asserting a cause with no theoretical frame, method or evidence - or conflating a school of thought (Durkheim's functionalism, Weber's interpretivism, Marx's conflict theory) with a mere topic.
Sociology is treated as common-sense commentary; the discipline's requirement to link observation to a paradigm, a concept and a method of inquiry is under-practised.
What to do instead
For each answer, name the paradigm, the key concept (anomie, social capital, stratification, division of labour) and the method that would test the claim (survey, interview, documentary, demographic statistics). Structure essays as: phenomenon → theoretical lens → evidence/method → limits.