John Locke Essay Competition · 2026 questions
John Locke Economics Essay Questions
Economics is the category where a student who has never taken an economics class can still win, because the questions are about incentives and trade-offs, not diagrams. It is also the category where most entrants recite a textbook model and lose.
The 2026 questions below are the official set. The 2027 questions are expected in late January 2027 and this page will carry them within 48 hours.
The 2026 Economics questions, one by one
Quoted verbatim from the John Locke Institute. For each: what the examiners are testing, where strong students lose marks, the argument lines that hold up over 2,000 words, and what to read before you write.
What it is really asking
Who bears the costs of removing cash: the unbanked, the private, the state's creditors. "Fear" invites you to separate risks that are real from risks that are rhetorical.
The trap
Listing pros and cons. The judges want a claim about which effect dominates and for whom.
Lines of argument that can carry 2,000 words
- Privacy and control: cash is anonymous and cannot be frozen; the strongest argument for fear is about state and platform power, not convenience.
- Financial inclusion runs both ways: cashlessness excludes the unbanked but mobile money (Kenya's M-Pesa) included millions. The empirical record does not favour one side.
- Monetary policy: without cash there is no zero lower bound, so negative rates become enforceable. Decide whether that is a feature or the thing to fear.
Read first
- The Curse of Cash, Kenneth Rogoff (the case for phasing out large notes)
- The Future of Money, Eswar Prasad
- Mobile Money and the Economy: A Review of the Evidence, World Bank Research Observer, 2016 (M-Pesa evidence)
What the judges reward in Economics
The official criteria are knowledge and understanding, competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. In this category that means:
- 1A model used to make a claim, then tested against a real episode.
- 2Distributional honesty: who gains, who loses, by how much, on what evidence.
- 3The counterfactual stated explicitly ("compared to what?").
- 4Data cited from primary sources (central banks, national statistics, journal articles), not from news summaries.
A published winning essay in this category
"Should governments fund spending by creating money?"
Kit Young Tham · First Prize, Economics, 2023
The essay states its verdict in paragraph two (sole monetary financing is infeasible; partial financing has a narrow use in downturns), then spends most of its length on the strongest counter-case, Japan's failure to generate inflation despite money creation, before explaining why that case does not generalise. Thirty-nine endnotes, almost all to central banks, the IMF and journals.
Read the essay on the Institute's siteOur analysis of every essay the Institute has published is in Past winning essays, analysed.
How to prepare for the 2027 Economics questions before they are released
- 1
Learn the six ideas every Economics question turns on: opportunity cost, elasticity, surplus, market power, externalities and the counterfactual. Our Economics Scholar course covers exactly these, timed to finish before the 2027 questions.
- 2
For each question, write the "compared to what?" sentence before anything else.
- 3
Find one dataset per claim. A single chart from a central bank beats five news articles.
- 4
Read the 2023 winning essay linked above and count how many paragraphs argue against its own thesis. Then match it.
John Locke Essay Competition prep for Economics
Economics Scholar Foundations
14 weekly sessions covering the core of AP Micro and Macro as essay evidence, built around past John Locke economics questions. Starts the week of 5 October 2026 and finishes before the 2027 questions are expected. Bundle with John Locke Basics for 20% off Basics.
Questions about the Economics category
No, and most entrants have not. The questions test whether you can reason about incentives, trade-offs and counterfactuals, and support the reasoning with evidence. Students without formal economics usually need a foundation in six or seven core ideas first; that is what our Economics Scholar Foundations course teaches between October and January, using past John Locke questions as the exercises.
The other nine categories
John Locke guides
The complete guide
Eligibility, rules, dates, judging and prizes in one place.
John Locke Essay Competition prep
All four programmes, compared, with the 2026 results and the 2027 timeline.
Deadline and timeline 2027
Every date, confirmed or expected, on one page.
The interview after shortlisting
What the Institute says, what students report, how to prepare.
Past winning essays, analysed
The seven published prize essays, paragraph by paragraph.
Is it prestigious, and worth entering?
What a shortlist, commendation or prize is worth in admissions.
Free essay planner
Question deconstruction, argument map and self-audit sheet.
2027 dates and changes tracker
What is confirmed, what is expected, and every 2026 rule change.
The competition from Dubai and the UAE
How the calendar sits against UAE school terms and exam seasons.