Interactive Economics Diagrams

Drag the curves and the diagram redraws itself: the new equilibrium, the dashed lines to the axes, the labels and the shaded areas for profit, tax revenue or deadweight loss. Every diagram is drawn the way A-level examiners expect to see it, with the original curve faded and the change shown in one colour.

One set of diagrams for every A-level board: AQA, Edexcel A, Edexcel B, OCR, Eduqas, WJEC, Edexcel International and Cambridge (CAIE). Choose your exam board above the diagrams to see its labels (for example PPC or abnormal profit), its spec section, notes on what its mark schemes credit, and its past paper questions for each diagram. Pick a diagram, then use Walk-through for a step-by-step explanation, Test me to check you can move the right curve, or Label quiz to practise labelling from memory. On the market diagrams, drag the round handle on a curve to change its price elasticity, or use Compare side by side to see the same change with inelastic and elastic curves. You can save any diagram as an image for your notes.

Diagrams in this tool

Markets and government intervention

Supply and demand: shifts in demand and supply, excess demand and excess supply, consumer and producer surplus.
Price elasticity of demand and supply: how PED decides what happens to total revenue, and how PES decides whether a demand shift changes price or quantity. Pivot either curve all the way from perfectly elastic to perfectly inelastic.
PED and total revenue: how PED changes along a straight demand line, the revenue-maximising price where PED = −1, and a unit elastic curve.
Income and cross elasticity: YED for luxuries, necessities and inferior goods, and XED for substitutes and complements.
Indirect tax: specific and ad valorem taxes, tax incidence, tax revenue and deadweight loss, and how price elasticity decides who pays.
Subsidy: who gains, the cost to the government and the deadweight loss.
Maximum price: shortages, rationing and black markets, for example rent controls.
Minimum price: surpluses and the cost of buying them, for example guaranteed prices for farmers.
Negative externality: MSC above MPC, overproduction, the welfare loss triangle and a Pigouvian tax.
Positive externality: MSB above MPB, under-consumption of merit goods and the case for a subsidy.

Theory of the firm

Cost curves: MC, AVC, AC and AFC, and why MC cuts the averages at their lowest points.
Perfect competition: firm and industry side by side, short-run profit and the long-run move to normal profit.
Monopoly: profit maximisation where MC = MR, supernormal profit and the deadweight loss.
Monopolistic competition: short-run profit, the long-run tangency solution and excess capacity.
Kinked demand curve: the gap in MR and why oligopoly prices are sticky.
Price discrimination: different prices in markets with different price elasticities, and first-degree discrimination.
Natural monopoly: falling long-run average cost and the choice between P = MC and P = AC regulation.

Macroeconomics

Aggregate demand and aggregate supply: demand-pull and cost-push inflation, output gaps, long-run growth, and classical and Keynesian AS.
The multiplier: how an injection raises AD by more than itself, and why leakages and spare capacity change the effect.
Production possibility frontier (PPF or PPC): scarcity, opportunity cost, unused resources and economic growth.
The Phillips curve: the short-run trade-off, expectations and the vertical long-run Phillips curve at the natural rate of unemployment.
The economic cycle: trend growth, booms and recessions, and positive and negative output gaps.

Getting diagram marks in the exam

Label both axes and every curve. Show the old and the new position of any curve that moves, with an arrow for the direction.
Mark the old and new equilibrium on the axes (P₁, P₂, Q₁, Q₂) and shade any area you name, such as tax revenue or welfare loss.
Refer to the diagram in your writing: “supply shifts from S₁ to S₂, so price rises from P₁ to P₂“. A diagram that the answer never uses earns little.

Practise with real exam questions in the past paper search. If you would like help turning diagrams into full-mark answers, book a free consultation.