Candidates will be asked to write a report explaining what an economic evaluation is and what they think this evaluation should take into account. For this exercise you’re encouraged to ‘show-off’ your knowledge, technical grasp and understanding of the relevant economics. You’ll have just 30 minutes to write your technical report. As part of your interview, you’ll be tested on what you write here.
As part of the Economic Assessment Centre you will be required to complete the following written exercises:
Technical report on a given topic. Candidates are sent the topic to research about 2 weeks before their EAC. For this exercise you are encouraged to ‘show off’ your knowledge, technical grasp and understanding of the relevant economics. But remember you will be verbally tested on what you write here as part of your interview. You will have 30 minutes to complete this report at EAC.
Policy report. For this report you must ‘translate’ your technical report into plain English for a non-economist. You will need to write clearly and concisely and will be marked down for jargon. You will have 30 minutes to complete this report at EAC.
Short answer questions (SAQs). This will be a set of questions (likely to be 10 in total) testing your breadth of macro, micro and technical economics as an honours graduate. It is not multiple choices. You have 30 minutes to complete this at EAC.
Examples of topics for the technical report/ policy report and SAQs used in previous years can be found on the links below together with the guidance given to assist assessors mark candidates’ papers. The technical reports are not ‘model answers’ they are an indication of what a clear pass and a borderline report may look like. The reports are only used as part of the assessment process of the Fast Stream Assistant Economists and should not be read as formal government policy.
Please do not be put off by the detail of these reports. We do not expect candidates at EAC to produce anything like as much information as these reports, especially given the time constraints candidates have to write reports (30 minutes each). Nevertheless this does give an indication of the sort of economic principles we expect candidate to draw on.
The guidance in these topics does not necessarily reflect in any way the views of the GES and is not in any sense a government statement.
- Smoking ban topic
- Sure Start topic
- Congestion Charging topic
- C02 Emissions topic
- Short Answer Question (SAQ) Examples – you’ll also have to answer ten Short Answer Questions at the EAC. You’ll have 30 minutes. All questions carry the same marks. You’ll be able to use freehand diagrams where you wish, but these must be clear, labelled and explained as required.