BEO6600 · Business Economics
The Complete Exam Bible · S1 2026Business Economics
Business Economics is Victoria University's combined micro and macro principles core. The micro half builds the market model — supply & demand, elasticity, consumer and producer surplus, taxes & deadweight loss, and the four market structures. The macro half measures the whole economy — GDP, inflation, the financial system, unemployment, AD-AS, and fiscal & monetary policy. The final exam is 50% of your grade, closed book, and covers Sessions 1-8 only, so this guide teaches each model to exam standard: the diagram markers reward, the formula they expect, and where the marks hide.
What BEO6600 covers
Thirteen sessions → one exam-ready map. Each links to its free chapter guide; the closed-book exam covers Sessions 1–8.
How BEO6600 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Individual assignment | 20% | Typed report + hand-drawn supply & demand diagrams (an Australian market) |
| Group report & presentation | 30% | Policy analysis with individual Q&A — covers the post-exam macro sessions |
| Final exam | 50% | Closed book (Respondus LockDown Browser) · in-class Session 9 · covers Sessions 1-8 only |
Tax revenue & deadweight loss — the signature diagram, mark by mark
- +1Draw S, D and the post-tax supply S+tax, shifted up by the full $0.60 tax.
- +1Mark the new quantity Q = 90, buyer price $3.40 (on D) and seller price $2.80 (on S). The wedge $3.40 − $2.80 = $0.60 = the tax.
- +2Tax revenue = t × Qafter = $0.60 × 90 = $54 — the shaded rectangle (a transfer to government).
- +1Deadweight loss = ½ × t × ΔQ = ½ × $0.60 × (100 − 90) = $3 — the triangle, lost to everyone.
- +1State it: quantity falls, buyers pay more, sellers keep less; the $3 triangle is welfare lost to trades that no longer happen.
Key terms
- Opportunity cost
- The value of the next-best alternative you give up when you make a choice — not the price on the tag, and not the sum of everything else you did not do. Sunk costs, already spent, are irrelevant to it.
- Elasticity
- How responsive quantity is to a change in price, income or another good's price — a unit-free ratio of percentage changes. BEO6600 computes it by the midpoint (arc) method, dividing each change by the average of the two values.
- Deadweight loss
- Welfare lost to mutually beneficial trades that no longer happen — the triangle a tax, a binding price control, or market power carves out of total surplus. It is destroyed, gained by no one.
- GDP deflator
- A measure of the price level: (nominal GDP ÷ real GDP) × 100. It isolates the price part of a change in nominal output; in the base year it equals 100.
- Crowding-out
- When government borrowing (a budget deficit) reduces national saving, pushing the real interest rate up and displacing private investment — the headline result of the loanable-funds diagram.
BEO6600 FAQ
Is BEO6600 hard?
Conceptually approachable but mark-dense: most questions reward applying a model to a diagram or a clean calculation, so the difficulty is precision under exam time. It packs a full micro half and a full macro half into one unit, and 50% of your grade rides on one closed-book exam.
How is BEO6600 assessed?
Three components: a 20% individual assignment (an Australian supply-and-demand market), a 30% group report & presentation (policy analysis, covering the post-exam macro sessions), and a 50% final exam — closed book via Respondus LockDown Browser, held in-class at Session 9. Always confirm the exact weights on your own VU Collaborate page.
What is on the BEO6600 final exam?
The closed-book exam covers Sessions 1-8 only: the whole micro core (supply & demand, elasticity, surplus, taxes & deadweight loss, externalities, the four market structures) plus macro measurement (GDP, CPI, inflation), the financial system and unemployment. AD-AS, fiscal & monetary policy and trade (Sessions 10-13) sit in the group report, not the exam.
Can I bring notes into the BEO6600 exam?
No — the exam is closed book, taken in Respondus LockDown Browser. A non-programmable calculator is allowed, and you draw and label diagrams by hand. Plan your revision around clean, fully-labelled diagrams rather than crammed notes you cannot bring in.
Is using AskSia for BEO6600 cheating?
No. AskSia is a study reference written in our own words — we host none of your lecturer's files, and Sia teaches you the method to earn the marks; it does not complete or sit your assessments.
How to study for the exam
Spend your exam revision on Sessions 1-8 — that is the entire closed-book scope. Treat the tax / deadweight-loss chain, the market-structures comparison, and the loanable-funds diagram as the signature chains: they recur and they carry diagram marks. For every model, practise drawing the diagram from a blank axis and labelling the exact areas markers reward — the surplus triangles, the tax wedge, the DWL triangle, the crowding-out shift. Drill the clean calculations (midpoint elasticity, the GDP deflator, CPI inflation, the unemployment rate) until the arithmetic is automatic. Don't burn exam-eve hours on AD-AS, policy or trade — learn those well for the 30% group report, but they are off the exam.
