International A Level Unit 3, Jan 2023

Q1 Given a Thai cafe's short-run marginal cost curve, pick the reason it rises (decreasing returns to scale / rising fixed costs / diminishing returns / diseconomies of scale).

Q2 Given a Botswanan textile manufacturer's output, total revenue, total costs and total fixed costs, calculate its average variable cost.

Q3 With 76% of US companies moving factories out of China in 2021, identify the government measure most likely to increase occupational mobility of labour. (higher unemployment benefits / relocation grants for businesses / more training schemes / a higher minimum wage)

Q4 Given a Sri Lankan street food stall's short-run curves for revenue and cost under profit maximisation, pick the correct deduction on market structure, efficiency, profit and shutdown.

Q5 Choose the likeliest outcome when a monopolist abandons profit maximisation for maximum sales volume (fewer workers / a higher price / lower total fixed costs / higher output).

Q6 The elasticity of demand for South African agricultural workers is about -0.3. Identify the most likely reason. (labour hard to replace with capital / high wage rates / price elastic demand for the final product / low productivity)

Q7(a) Using Figure 1, calculate with workings how much gas's wholesale price changed in percentage terms over the year to 1 April 2022.

Q7(b) Explain the term 'concentration ratio', drawing on Figure 2 and Extract A's second paragraph.

Q7(c) Analyse two entry barriers that could block a newcomer from the UK energy market, using Figure 2 and Extract A.

Q7(d) Examine how dearer wholesale natural gas feeds through to UK gas suppliers' production costs, using Figure 1 and Extract A.

Q7(e) Discuss, with a cost and revenue diagram, how a raised energy price cap affects suppliers and consumers alike, citing Extracts A and B.

Q10 Pick an industry and evaluate, with diagrams, what a firm gains by expanding through acquisition, as WestJet did with Sunwing Travel Group in 2022.

Q8 Do state-owned enterprises and private firms always pursue different goals? Evaluate with diagrams, comparing Norway's subsidised universities with fee-charging profit-maximising US ones.

Q9 Taking a firm holding monopsony power, evaluate what that means for workers and suppliers, as with Walmart's 10 500 stores across 24 countries squeezing farm producers.