A Level economics - summer reading

[LaurelGrove]

Somewhat out of the blue, DD has decided she wants to do A Level economics. She's a talented mathematician and was going to do maths, further maths, physics and French but has changed her mind about French.

She seems to have picked up a fair amount of background knowledge from somewhere (probably TikTok) but I wondered what books people would recommend for the summer. School won't provide a reading list but I think it would be good for her to have some idea of what she's getting in to before term starts.

Any recommendations? We get the Economist each week but she won't read it willingly!

Tim Harford, of the FT & Radio 4’s superb ‘More or Less’ is great at bringing economics to life. As well as getting stuck into his columns & podcasts, I would recommend his his books ‘The Undercover Economist’ & ‘The Undercover Economist Strikes Back’.

Oh, great idea! She'd enjoy those. Thank you.

Our comp provides summer reading & resource lists, by subject, for those moving from Y11 to Y12. I can see these are also loaded onto the 6th form pages of the school's website. Your DD's school/college might do something similar and/or she can ask the Economics lead teacher to forward that kind of list to her?

You could also buy a study guide for the relevant exam board and suggest DD skim reads that to familiarise herself with the topics and syllabus structure. That might ease the transition in that first term, especially as she is taking 4 A levels and so fewer free periods to consolidate as she learns.

...and just to add, if DDs school literally 'won't provide a reading list' if she asks, when I search 'sixth form economics reading list', lists provided by a number of schools come up in the search results (though not my DCs).

Our school tells students to relax and enjoy themselves during the summer and doesn't provide reading lists. I would have thought a few podcasts will be more than enough.

Mine is similar and is enjoying The Undercover Economist, I didn’t know there was a second book!

DS has also enjoyed The Undercover Economist and anything by Tim Harford.

A good newspaper everyday (Times or Guardian) would be a good habit to get into. There’s an offer for The Guardian weekly which is a magazine featuring best journalism of the week for £12 for 12 weeks I think

Our school tells students to relax and enjoy themselves during the summer and doesn't provide reading lists

This is actually a massive long holiday of around 10 weeks. Depending on your GCSE predicted grades and then the subsequent A level grades, this is where those who will be applying for competitive courses or top universities are actually doing stuff that they can put on their personal statement. Anything from books, Freakonomics, The Undercover Economist etc and podcasts like More or Less, lectures on YouTube (Ds watches LSE guest lectures) TED talks etc.

This isn't about reading lists for A level subjects but deepening the understanding of a subject you may want to do at university and over 10 weeks that is plenty of time to be able to do that and relax too. This is also the time to look at university websites to see all the courses they offer, the grades needed to gain entry and whether certain subjects are required.

If you look at Five Books (website - brilliant) you will find all sorts of recommendations there - from Tim Harford amongst others.
we have two fab graphic introductions to micro and macro economics, which were recommended there, and are apparently 1st year uni level.

My ds enjoyed Nudge by Richard Thaler at that age.

Also agree with previous poster that it’s a really long break so a great time to do reading around the subject or work experience as they can all help university course choice and personal statements.

@LaurelGrove my son did economics A Level at a super-selective state grammar school, and this is the transition info we were sent beforehand:

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^The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford, and Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner remain popular introductions to economics analysis but they are somewhat dated now.

Two books, both published in 2017, James Kwak’s Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality and The Limits of the Market: The Pendulum Between Government and Market by Paul De Grauwe are short and readable.

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is an important new book which raises questions about economic research in the era of big data.

Tim Harford has published The Undercover Economist Strikes Back which covers macroeconomics.

If you would like to look into something a little more policy oriented I would suggest Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein.

Richard Thaler, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics 2017 has also written Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics.

The Big Short by Michael Lewis and his recent Flash Boys give insights into aspects of the financial system.

Economics: The User’s Guide by Ha-Joon Chang complements his 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism.

An appeal for a new way of thinking is made in Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth.

Tim Harford is an outstanding communicator and his Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy shows the impact of invention.

On top of this, you should get into the habit of reading a quality paper. Look for articles in the main paper about the current state of the economy, especially inflation, unemployment, growth and the standard of living.

An optional but very useful extra is The Economist published weekly. You will have the opportunity to subscribe to this at a heavily subsidised rate from September.^

Besides Tim Harford, Levitt, and James Kwak that PP mentioned (all interesting, fun read), reading the Financial Times regularly will be useful.

Guardian has been mentioned previously, but I don't think its economics/business page is good, or at least not very useful for A level econ. Times business page is decent though.

Also take a look at marginal revolution blog run by two economics professors, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok - https://marginalrevolution.com/

Some of the posts veer into other areas, history, politics, current affairs, but majority are foucsed on contemporary economic issues covering many different countries. All are accessible to non-economists and the comments beow the main post are often informative.

They also have a youtube channel. The videos are excellent introduction to a number of important economics topics most of which are in A level economics syllabus and the videos could be used as a gentle introduction into the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/@MarginalRevolutionUniversity/videos (if you sort by popular, the results are more useful)

www.amazon.co.uk/Cant-Just-Print-More-Money/dp/1847943381 I teach A-level Economics. My husband picked this up at the airport last week. It's a good read and essentially covers the whole A-level syllabus in easy prose.

www.tutor2u.net/economics/blog Tutor2u is also a good resource to dip into.

I'd very strongly advise not bothering. How many summers do you get as a 16 year old?

Economics A level is honestly child's play for anyone who's realistically hoping for a high grade in A level further maths. Also, 'wider reading' is almost useless for the subject - exam papers are basically pushing a bunch of curves around and then rote learning chin-scratching 'evaluation' techniques where you speculate how well your curves fit the specifics of the situation you're asked about.

I suppose MAYBE something like this might not be useless for macro - just a little something to get the reader used to the idea of economic variables and some of the how/maybe a little hint of the why they vary by country. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pocket-World-Figures-2021-Economist/dp/1788164970/ref=asc_df_1788164970/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=430712942047&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2487451386246386219&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045908&hvtargid=pla-921039058937&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=101598702898&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=430712942047&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2487451386246386219&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045908&hvtargid=pla-921039058937.

I strongly disagree with the previous poster. Students who want to flourish at A level need to start a new subject well prepared and with the right attitude. The current syllabuses are heavily applied so it helps a lot to know stuff, and your reading comprehension needs to be excellent.

...and to add to @Phineyj's latest post, we need to remember Economics is a subject most have not studied at GCSE and OP's DD has decided to switch from French to Economics at a late stage in the 'decision cycle', so at least a little background reading etc could cement that choice in their mind before they plunge into it all in September.

I am not advocating huge amounts of prep; my DC benefitted from a bit of a refresh / content read around in August for their chosen subjects and it was not something I pushed; interestingly older DC encouraged younger DC to do it when it was their turn.