Textbook data is out of date the day it prints. A policy story from this month is not, and students notice the difference — particularly when the policy is one they can see from the classroom window.
Below is a complete data response in the standard format. It involves no student data whatsoever: nothing to consent to, nobody to ask, and nothing that can go wrong beyond a question that needed rewording. Underneath it is the method, which is the part worth taking away.
1Over the past decade China has become the world's largest producer of electric vehicles (EVs). Output has risen steeply, though not evenly: the industry expanded rapidly in some years and contracted in others as the wider economy slowed. As firms have grown, many have achieved substantial economies of scale, particularly in battery manufacturing, where a small number of very large producers now supply much of the world.
2Government support has been extensive. For several years buyers received a direct subsidy on each qualifying vehicle, manufacturers were exempted from certain purchase taxes, and large sums were spent on public charging infrastructure. The per-vehicle subsidy has since been reduced sharply as the industry has matured.
3Competition between domestic producers is intense. Average prices have fallen year on year, several smaller manufacturers have left the market, and profit margins across the industry are thin. Employment in the sector has nonetheless continued to grow.
4Exports have grown faster than domestic sales. Chinese EVs are now sold across Asia, Europe and Latin America, and vehicles have become one of the country's most significant manufactured exports.
1Shanghai limits the number of new private car licence plates issued each month by setting a quota. Plates are not sold at a fixed price but auctioned, and the number available is decided in advance by the city government, independently of how many people want one. Demand consistently exceeds the quota by a wide margin, and only a small proportion of bidders succeed in any month.
2The policy is defended on the grounds of congestion and air quality. Each additional petrol car imposes costs on people other than its driver — slower journeys for everyone else, and worse air for those who do not drive at all. Critics argue the auction favours wealthier households, and that some buyers have responded by registering vehicles in neighbouring provinces.
3Plates for battery electric vehicles have been treated differently, and have been issued under far less restrictive conditions in order to encourage a shift away from petrol engines. Registrations of electric vehicles in the city have risen sharply as a result.
1The rapid growth of Chinese EV exports has prompted a response abroad. The European Union has imposed additional tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles, arguing that state support gives producers an unfair cost advantage. Chinese manufacturers have responded in three ways: absorbing part of the tariff by cutting prices, redirecting exports towards markets without such tariffs, and building assembly plants inside the European Union.
2Strong export demand affects the currency as well. Foreign buyers must obtain Chinese yuan (CNY) to pay for vehicles, and economists disagree about how far this has offset other pressures on the exchange rate.
| Month | Plates available | Bidders | Average winning bid (RMB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 10 000 | 168 000 | 92 300 |
| February | 10 000 | 174 500 | 93 100 |
| March | 12 000 | 191 200 | 91 800 |
| April | 12 000 | 203 600 | 92 600 |
| 2019 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| EV production (million units) | 1.2 | 12.4 |
| EV exports (units) | 220 000 | 1 900 000 |
| Value of EV exports (USD billion) | 5.5 | 45.6 |
| EVs as share of new car sales (%) | 4.7 | 48.0 |
| Average domestic EV price (RMB thousand) | 232 | 168 |
| Employment in the sector (millions) | 1.1 | 3.4 |
| 2019 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|
| Exchange rate (CNY per EUR) | 7.74 | 8.15 |
| Real GDP growth (%) | 6.0 | 4.8 |
| EU tariff on imported Chinese EVs (%) | 10.0 | 35.3 |
| Government spending on EV subsidies (RMB billion) | 32 | 11 |
| PM2.5 concentration, major cities (µg/m³) | 42 | 29 |
The transferable part — about half an hour
Start with a policy, not a topic. "Externalities" produces a generic paper. A specific policy with a real mechanism produces one with something to argue about. The best stimulus is one where reasonable economists disagree — here, whether state support for an industry has been worth its cost, which is the whole of part (g).
Choose a story broad enough to carry the paper. This is the constraint people miss. A data response has to reach across the syllabus: the four-mark questions above want four different diagrams. A story about one market cannot do that. A story about an industry, its home city's policy and its export markets can — subsidy, externality, tariff, exchange rate, all from the same material.
Make the local example the default, not the treat. Half of this is visible from a Shanghai classroom window. Students who have watched a parent bid for a licence plate arrive with an intuition the textbook cannot give them, and evaluation is where that intuition pays.
Write the command terms last. Build the texts and tables first, then ask what they can genuinely support. A table with two columns supports a calculation and a comparison; it does not support a question about trends across a decade. Most weak practice questions are ones the data cannot actually answer — so the last check is to answer every part yourself, using only what is printed.
The figures are illustrative. They are the right shape for the policies described and they make the calculation work, but they should not be quoted as data. For a real sitting, drop in current published figures; the questions do not change.
Check it against the current subject guide. The structure follows the standard format — two definitions, a calculation, a sketch, four diagram questions and a fifteen-mark evaluation, totalling forty. But the guide is the authority.
This is an original paper, not a past paper. It was written for this page. Past examination papers are the IB's copyright and are not reproduced here.
Nothing on this page involves a single student. No personal information, so no cross-border transfer question, no consent to obtain, and nobody who can be harmed if the output is poor. The worst case is a question you rewrite.
That is exactly why it is first. You learn what these tools are genuinely good at on work where being wrong costs you nothing — and by the time you reach the tasks that do involve student data, you already know which parts to keep for yourself. The other two starting points →
The full library, on the IB site