How to study economics: graphs, models and the why behind every curve
If you're wondering how to study economics, here's the short answer: draw. Every model in the major can be told with a graph, a couple of equations and a story ("price goes up, people buy less, producers want to sell more"). If you can draw the graph on a blank page and tell that story out loud, you're ready. If you only recognize it on the slide, you're not there yet.
What makes economics its own kind of subject (whether you're an econ major or taking Principles of Microeconomics for a business degree) is that it runs on three languages at once. There's the graph, with curves that shift around; there's the math, with derivatives, elasticities and systems of equations; and there's the prose, with thinkers, schools and debates that start to blur together. Understanding economics means translating between those three languages, and exams ask for exactly that: read this graph and explain it, or turn this word problem into equations.
It's not my major: I study computer science. What follows comes from looking closely at how economics courses are studied and graded, plus what we know about how people learn, applied to that kind of exam.
Draw every graph on a blank page
Micro and macro lecture slides are packed with finished graphs: supply and demand, cost curves, IS-LM, the Phillips curve. The trap is that they start to feel familiar just from seeing them every week, and familiar isn't the same as knowing.
A routine that works for each new graph:
- Look at it once, carefully. What's on each axis, what each curve represents, and why it slopes the way it does.
- Close the slides and draw it from memory, with labeled axes and labeled curves.
- Compare with the original. Whatever you missed (an axis label, the equilibrium point, the direction of the slope) is what you need to look at again.
- Make something happen. Add a tax, cut income, increase the money supply. Shift the right curve and say what happens to price and quantity.
Step four is the one that counts. Econ exams rarely say "draw a supply curve". They say "what happens in this market if the government sets a price ceiling?". If you've practiced shifting curves, that question almost answers itself.
Tell the story behind every shift
A shifted curve with no explanation won't get you the points. In economics, every shift has a mechanism behind it, and the exam wants that mechanism in words.
Say the price of beef goes up. The demand curve for chicken shifts right. Why? Because they're substitutes: some people who were buying beef switch to chicken, at any given price of chicken. Two sentences like that make a complete answer. The graph alone, with no sentence, is half an answer.
To practice, explain each model as if you were telling a friend who doesn't take economics. That's the idea behind the Feynman technique: if you can't say it without jargon, there's a piece you haven't understood yet. And the "but why?" questions you ask yourself are the same ones a professor asks in office hours or on a free-response question.
An economics graph is a story someone drew: if you can't tell it, you don't know it.
The math, calmly and in order
How much math an economics degree has depends a lot on the school, but it almost always shows up: take the derivative of a cost function, maximize a utility function, solve for equilibrium with two equations. A lot of students get stuck there, and not because of the economics, but because the math tool underneath isn't solid.
What helps:
- Review the tool before the topic. If you're about to maximize profit in Intermediate Micro, refresh how to take a derivative and set it to zero. Half an hour of calculus review saves you hours of confusion.
- Always tie the math to the graph. The equilibrium you solve for algebraically is where the curves cross. Sketch it next to your work: if the two don't match, something's off.
- Do the same type of problem with new numbers. The first time you solve for equilibrium with a tax, you're learning it. By the third time, you know how to do it.
- Interpret the result. A price elasticity of minus two isn't just a number: it means a one percent increase in price cuts quantity demanded by about two percent. The exam usually wants that sentence.
A calculation without interpretation is only half the problem. In plenty of courses, the right number with no economic explanation won't earn full credit.
Schools of thought: build a comparison table
The other half of the major is written theory, especially in Macroeconomics, History of Economic Thought and Political Economy. Classical, Keynesian, monetarist, new classical, Austrian: each one explains recessions, unemployment or inflation differently, and the slides present them one after another until they run together.
For this part, a comparison table beats any summary. Use the same columns for every school:
- What it assumes about markets, prices and expectations.
- What it blames for the problem (unemployment, for example).
- What policy it recommends.
- A historical example where it was applied or argued about.
Once the table exists, typical essay prompts ("compare the Keynesian and monetarist views of fiscal policy") come down to reading two rows. To lock it in, cover one column and try to fill it from memory. The differences between schools that look alike are what gets asked most and mixed up most.
Apply the theory to the news
Economics is one of the few majors where today's headlines are study material. A central bank rate hike, a price control, a currency devaluation, a new tariff: they're all real cases of the models you're seeing in lecture.
A habit worth building: once a week, take one economics story and try to explain it with what you've learned. Which curve moves? Which school would defend the policy, and which would criticize it? No need for an essay: one graph and three sentences are enough. The news is a free supply of exam questions. Besides cementing the models, it prepares you for free-response questions and for the case analyses a lot of courses assign.
If you're a business major and economics is one of your required courses, all of this still applies. I wrote about how it fits with the rest of that degree in how to study business administration.
Your professor's slides
A big chunk of economics comes as lecture slides full of graphs the professor explained in class by moving curves around with a pointer. Weeks later, sitting still in a PDF, they're hard to rebuild. The arrow showing which way demand shifted is gone, and so is the why.
For that part you can use Filmina, a web app that explains your lecture slides out loud, one slide at a time, pointing at the part it's talking about. It also looks at each slide as an image, so it explains graphs and tables along with the text, and it reads formulas out in words. Then you can ask Mina, the chat that answers from your own material ("why does the supply curve shift left here?"), and practice with questions built from what it just explained. It has limits: it needs an internet connection, it can't read a scanned presentation, and it won't do your problem sets for you. You still have to draw the graph yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is economics a hard major?
It asks you to combine math, graphs and a lot of written theory, which makes it heavy at first. Students who practice drawing the models and explaining them in words from the first weeks usually find it much more manageable than those who only read.
How do you study economics graphs?
Look at each one once, close the slides and draw it from memory with labeled axes and curves. Then shift a curve (add a tax, cut income) and explain what happens to price and quantity.
Do you need to be good at math to study economics?
It depends on the program, but you'll almost always need derivatives, equations and functions. You don't have to be a math whiz: you need that foundation to be solid, and you need to tie every calculation to its graph and its meaning.
How do you remember the schools of economic thought?
Compare them instead of memorizing them. Build a table with what each school assumes, what it blames and what it recommends, then practice filling in a covered column. The differences between similar schools are what exams ask about most.