Which VCE Economics past paper do students score lowest on?

The 2023 Exam, averaging 58.2% across 3,220 marked attempts on AusGrader. The 2025 Exam is the highest on 73.3%.

Which VCE Economics dot points give the best return on revision time?

3.1.16 (1.4 marks at risk per 100), 3.2.5 (1.1 marks at risk per 100) and 3.1.17 (1.0 marks at risk per 100). Marks at risk combines a dot point's share of paper marks with the marks students drop on it, so it ranks by recoverable marks and not by score alone.

How many attempts is each VCE Economics figure based on?

18,953 marked attempts overall, with the per-row count shown in every table. Any cut below 50 attempts is withheld instead of published.

Do these averages show how the VCAA cohort performed?

No. They are AusGrader users' marked attempts, a self-selected group practising when they chose to and often without exam timing. They corroborate what VCAA publishes about this subject and do not replace it.

VCE Economics hardest topics

Across 18,953 marked attempts on AusGrader, VCE Economics students average 66.8% on questions taken from board external papers. Explain is both the lowest scoring command verb on 65.9% and the costliest, because it carries 47.0% of the paper on its own. These are self-selected users practising when they chose to, not the VCAA cohort under exam conditions.

How to read these numbers

The figures are AusGrader users' marked attempts, not VCAA results. They corroborate what the board publishes about this subject and do not stand in for it.
Any cut with fewer than 50 attempts is withheld, which on this page is 27 dot points and 14 verbs. Every figure shown carries its attempt count.
Scores cover questions mapped to the VCE Economics study design from any board's external papers, which is why the sample is larger than the 6 VCAA papers alone. The paper table below is the exception and uses VCAA papers only.
Internal assessment and school-uploaded exams are excluded throughout, so these averages differ from the ones on VCE Economics performance stats, which count every attempt.

Score by past paper

Year	Exam	Average	Attempts
2025	Exam	73.3%	3,230
2024	Exam	67.7%	160
2023	Exam	58.2%	3,220
2022	Exam	62.4%	3,248
2021	Exam	70.6%	3,171
2020	Exam	67.6%	3,113

The lowest average belongs to the 2023 Exam on 58.2% from 3,220 attempts, and the highest to the 2025 Exam on 73.3% from 3,230 attempts. A paper's average reflects both how hard it was and who chose to sit it, so treat the spread as a guide to which papers make demanding practice.

Score by question type

Question type	Average	Attempts
Multiple choice	66.4%	18,070
Short answer	67.3%	829
Extended response	71.6%	54

Score by unit

Unit	Average	Attempts
Unit 3: Australia’s living standards	66.1%	13,145
Unit 4: Managing the economy	68.0%	6,612

An attempt counts once per unit, so a question assessed across two units appears in both rows and the column adds to slightly more than 18,953.

The priority list: heavy topics with low scores

Topic	Share of marks	Average	Attempts	Marks at risk
Aggregate demand policies and domestic economic stability	29.3%	65.6%	4,685	10.1
Domestic macroeconomic goals	21.4%	61.9%	5,222	8.2
An introduction to microeconomics: the market system, resource allocation and government intervention	22.1%	71.9%	4,478	6.2
Australia and the international economy	11.8%	65.0%	3,515	4.1
Aggregate supply policies	15.4%	74.4%	1,936	3.9

Aggregate demand policies and domestic economic stability tops the list on 10.1 marks at risk per 100 paper marks, 1.9 ahead of Domestic macroeconomic goals.

The same cut at dot-point level

Dot point	Content	Share of marks	Average	Attempts	Marks at risk
3.1.16	types of market failure, including public goods, externalities, asymmetric information and common access resources	4.2%	65.7%	640	1.4
3.2.5	the meaning and importance of aggregate supply and the factors that may affect the level of aggregate supply in the economy, including quantity and quality of the factors of production, costs of production, technological change, productivity growth, exchange rates and climatic conditions, and other events including government regulations and disruptions to international supply chains	3.2%	65.5%	1,275	1.1
3.1.17	the role and effect of indirect taxation, subsidies, regulations, advertising and direct provision as forms of government intervention in the market to address market failure	2.1%	53.2%	55	1.0
4.2.5	trade liberalisation and its short-term and long-term effects on Australia’s international competitiveness, the allocation of resources, aggregate supply, and the domestic macroeconomic goals and living standards	3.5%	74.8%	875	0.9
4.2.3	how one of the following budgetary policies is designed to affect aggregate supply, Australia’s international competitiveness, the achievement of domestic macroeconomic goals, and living standards training and education; research and development; subsidies; infrastructure; tax reform	2.9%	70.4%	287	0.9
3.3.3	cyclical and structural influences on Australia’s current account balance	1.9%	55.0%	732	0.8
4.1.5	transmission mechanism of monetary policy and its effect on the level of aggregate demand, including the four channels of savings and investment, cash-flow, exchange rate, and asset prices and wealth	2.6%	67.7%	631	0.8
4.1.15	the role of automatic stabilisers (cyclical component of the budget) in influencing aggregate demand and stabilising the business cycle	3.2%	73.6%	743	0.8
3.2.17	causes of inflation, including demand inflation and cost inflation	1.9%	56.4%	488	0.8
3.3.5	the exchange rate, its meaning and measurement and the factors affecting its value, including relative interest rates, commodity prices and the terms of trade, demand for exports and imports, foreign investment, relative rates of inflation, credit ratings and speculation	2.9%	72.5%	848	0.8
4.1.7	the stance of monetary policy over the past two years and its likely effect on the achievement of the domestic macroeconomic goals and living standards	3.2%	75.4%	78	0.8
3.2.9	the meaning of the goal of full employment, including the NAIRU (natural rate of unemployment)	2.0%	60.7%	275	0.8
3.3.2	the balance of payments and its components	1.9%	59.8%	974	0.8
4.2.4	the effect of skilled immigration policy on population, productivity and participation and the subsequent effect on productive capacity, aggregate supply, international competitiveness, the achievement of domestic macroeconomic goals, and living standards	2.1%	65.9%	120	0.7
3.1.20	construct and interpret demand and supply diagrams and a PPF model	1.8%	61.5%	503	0.7
3.3.6	the terms of trade, its meaning and measurement and the factors that may affect the terms of trade, including commodity prices and production costs in trading partners	1.4%	50.8%	495	0.7
4.1.16	the role of discretionary stabilisers (structural component of the budget) in influencing aggregate demand and stabilising the business cycle	2.8%	76.2%	57	0.7
4.1.8	the strengths and weaknesses of using monetary policy to affect aggregate demand and influence the achievement of the domestic macroeconomic goals and living standards	2.2%	72.1%	329	0.6
4.1.25	predict the impact of changes in aggregate demand policies on the achievement of the domestic macroeconomic goals and living standards	1.4%	59.4%	477	0.6
3.1.13	factors affecting price elasticity of supply, including spare capacity, production period and durability of goods	1.6%	69.7%	416	0.5

Which command verbs cost the most marks

Verb	Share of marks	Average	Attempts	Marks at risk
explain	47.0%	65.9%	474	16.0
analyse	9.4%	70.0%	155	2.8
describe	8.1%	66.2%	168	2.7
evaluate	4.6%	67.9%	92	1.5
identify	1.0%	79.0%	50	0.2

Explain is both the lowest average at 65.9% and the costliest verb at 16.0 marks per 100, because it carries 47.0% of the paper. Each verb above is practised in the VCE Economics question bank, where the marking criteria show what VCAA expects the answer to do.

What this does not measure

Where to practise

Work the priority list from the top: Aggregate demand policies and domestic economic stability and Domestic macroeconomic goals first, then the dot points above. Each topic page holds real VCAA questions with marking criteria attached. For what the papers actually cover, read VCE Economics most tested topics.

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