This page is a free taster: 20 of the most-used diagrams, drawn accurately and labelled the way mark schemes expect. The full Diagram Bank has 171 diagrams, and every one is interactive. Drag the curves, see what moves and why, and download any diagram for your notes.
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A well-drawn diagram can lift an answer, and a mislabelled one can quietly cost marks. Every diagram in the bank is drawn from the economics, not sketched by eye.
Marginal cost cuts average cost at its lowest point because the arithmetic puts it there. The monopolistic competition tangency is solved, not nudged into place.
Price level and real output on macro diagrams, costs and revenue on firm diagrams, dotted lines to the axes, every curve named.
In the full bank you drag a curve and watch prices, output and shaded areas change, so you understand the diagram instead of memorising it.
Each diagram comes with drawing steps, what earns credit, common slips and the question types it is used for.
Where a diagram sits on the Edexcel or AQA specification, the spec point is shown underneath it.
The whole of cost theory hangs off one fact: marginal cost cuts average cost at its lowest point.
Edexcel 3.3.2a · AQA 4.1.4.4
One draggable price line takes you through supernormal profit, normal profit, loss and shutdown.
Edexcel 3.4.2b · AQA 4.1.5.3
Drag demand and watch price, output and the profit rectangle re-solve. Clean numbers: Q=20, P=60.
Edexcel 3.4.5b · AQA 4.1.5.6
The tangency is solved, not sketched — and the excess capacity it creates is bracketed on the diagram.
Edexcel 3.4.3b · AQA 4.1.5.4
A straight frontier makes one claim: every extra unit of one good costs the same amount of the other, however much you have already given up.
Edexcel 1.1.4 · AQA 4.1.1.5
A shift means more is wanted at every price — and naming the cause correctly is what separates a 2-mark answer from a 4-mark one.
Edexcel 1.2.2 · AQA 4.1.3.1
Equilibrium is not where the curves happen to cross — it is the only price at which nobody is left with an unsold unit or an unmet want.
Edexcel 1.2.6 · AQA 4.1.3.5
The gap between what buyers would have paid and what they actually paid — and it is bigger the less elastic demand is.
Edexcel 1.2.8 · AQA 4.1.5.11
The same 30% price rise, five different demand curves, five different answers — and the steepness is what tells you which you are looking at.
Edexcel 1.2.3 · AQA 4.1.3.2
Firms pay their own costs but not society’s, so they overproduce — and the welfare loss is the triangle between the two cost curves.
Edexcel 1.3.2c · AQA 4.1.8.4
The merit-good diagram: consuming benefits others too, so the market under-consumes and the welfare gain is what intervention could recover.
Edexcel 1.3.2d · AQA 4.1.8.4, 4.1.8.5
A fixed amount per unit shifts supply straight up, and the vertical gap between the two supply curves is the tax — which is where every mark on this question lives.
Edexcel 1.4.1a · AQA 4.1.8.9
A price ceiling makes the good cheaper for whoever gets it and unavailable to everyone else — and the diagram shows exactly how many people that is.
Edexcel 1.4.1a · AQA 4.1.8.9
All three curves on one set of axes: AD sets the short-run position, LRAS sets where the economy must end up, and the gap between them is the output gap.
Edexcel 2.3.3 · AQA 4.2.2.2
Too much money chasing too few goods: demand rises against a supply side that cannot keep up, so the price level is pulled upwards.
Edexcel 2.5.1 · AQA 4.2.3.3
The supply shock: prices rise and output falls at the same time, which no demand-side policy can fix without making one of them worse.
Edexcel 2.5.1 · AQA 4.2.3.3
The short-run trade-off: less unemployment bought at the price of more inflation, and the diagram that made demand management look easy.
Edexcel 2.6.4b · AQA 4.2.3.4
The wage is a price like any other, set where the number of workers firms want equals the number willing to work — and the diagram shows what happens at every other wage.
Edexcel 3.5.3a · AQA 4.1.6.3
Four areas, four different people: producers gain, the government collects, and two triangles are lost by everybody. Getting all four labelled is what the question is testing.
Edexcel 4.1.6 · AQA 4.2.6.2
Cumulative share of income against cumulative share of population: the further the curve sags below the diagonal, the more unequal the distribution — and the diagonal itself is what perfect equality would look like.
Edexcel 4.2.2 · AQA 4.1.7.1
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