HSC Economics Section III: How to Use the Stimulus

Section III looks like Section IV with some extra reading. It isn't. It is marked against a different criterion, and students who write it like a normal essay with a stimulus quote dropped into the introduction lose marks they never realise were available.

You choose either Question 25 or Question 26. Each is worth 20 marks, and the paper suggests 35 minutes. Each comes with a page or two of stimulus: an extract from the RBA, the Productivity Commission or a newspaper, plus a graph or a table.

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The criterion that changes everything

Both extended response sections print their assessment criteria on the paper. Section IV asks how well you "apply relevant economic information, terms, concepts, relationships and theory". Section III swaps that for something else: how well you "use the information provided".

Then look at how the marking guideline turns that into marks. For the 2025 balance of payments question, the top band (17 to 20 marks) required that the response:

Synthesises own knowledge and understanding with the information provided, to develop a sustained, logical and cohesive response

The band below (13 to 16) still says "synthesises", just with a "logical and cohesive" rather than "sustained" response. Drop to 9 to 12 and the wording changes to "uses own knowledge and understanding with the information provided". By 5 to 8 the response is described as "generalised".

So there is a ladder. At the bottom you ignore the stimulus or only restate it. In the middle you use it alongside your own knowledge. At the top you synthesise, which means the stimulus and your own knowledge are working on the same argument at the same time.

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What synthesis looks like on the page

The difference is easiest to see in a single paragraph.

Here is narration. It restates the stimulus without doing anything with it:

The table shows that men aged 45 to 54 earn a median of $1500 a week while women of the same age earn $1200. This shows there is a gender pay gap in Australia.

Here is use. It adds own knowledge, but the two halves sit side by side:

The table shows that men aged 45 to 54 earn $1500 a week while women earn $1200. The gender pay gap is caused by occupational segregation and career interruptions.

Here is synthesis:

The stimulus shows median full-time earnings for men and women are equal at $600 a week for 15 to 19 year olds, but by 45 to 54 a gap of $300 has opened, with women earning 20% less than men. The gap widens through exactly the years when career interruption for caring responsibilities is concentrated, which compounds through lower seniority and promotion rates and continues into lower superannuation balances in retirement. That makes gender inequality a lifetime problem rather than a starting-wage problem, with lower lifetime earnings reducing consumption and leaving more women reliant on government transfers in old age.

The third version does three things the others don't. It reads the data properly, noticing that the gap is zero at the start and opens with age. It calculates something from the stimulus rather than just copying it. And it uses the pattern in the data as evidence for a mechanism the student brought from their own knowledge, then follows that mechanism through to an economic effect, which is what the 2025 Question 26 actually asked about.

That is synthesis: the stimulus becomes evidence for your argument rather than a separate thing you report on.

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The five-minute method

Before you write anything, spend five minutes on this. It feels like time you can't afford. It is the most productive five minutes in the section.

1. Break the question into its parts

Underline the verb, then every component the question names. 2025 Question 25 read:

Explain the reasons for trends since 2016 in the size and composition of Australia's Balance of Payments. In your answer, refer to the information provided.

That is a verb (explain), a focus (reasons for trends), a time frame (since 2016), and two dimensions (size and composition). The marking guideline shows why this matters. Its 9 to 12 band includes responses that demonstrate "a sound understanding of the reasons for recent trends in the size OR composition" of the balance of payments. Handle only one of the two dimensions well and that is roughly where you land, however good the writing.

2. Annotate the stimulus against the question

For each piece of stimulus, write one word in the margin: the concept it gives evidence for. Then write what it doesn't tell you, because that is the gap your own knowledge has to fill.

In the 2025 balance of payments stimulus, the extract mentions the collapse and recovery of education and tourism exports around COVID-19, and notes that since 2017 the economy has generated savings in excess of domestic investment. The graph shows the current account, net goods and services and net primary income from 2016. Annotated, that gives you:

• the services exports detail: composition of the goods and services balance
• savings exceeding investment: the reason the current account moved into surplus, and the key to the change in capital flows
• the graph: the size of the swing, and net primary income staying in deficit throughout

What the stimulus doesn't give you is the cause of the goods surplus, which was the commodity price boom and the terms of trade. That is the own knowledge you bring, and it is where your own statistics go.

3. Plan with both columns filled

Write a thesis sentence that answers the question. Then plan four or five paragraphs, and for each one note one reference to the stimulus and one piece of your own evidence. If a paragraph has no stimulus reference, ask whether it needs one. If none of your paragraphs has your own data, the response will read as a commentary on the stimulus, and examiners have named that problem explicitly. On the 2025 inequality question, they reported that responses over-relied on the stimulus and narrated the data rather than arguing with it.

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How to cite the stimulus

Name the source the first time you use it, briefly: "The RBA extract notes...", "The ABS data provided shows...". After that, "the stimulus" or "the graph" is fine.

Quote numbers with their units and periods, exactly as given. If the graph is in billions of dollars per quarter, say so. Misreading the units on a stimulus graph is a very visible error, because the marker has the same graph in front of them.

Calculate where you can. A percentage change, a gap, a ratio. It takes thirty seconds and it shows you have engaged with the numbers rather than glanced at them.

Read levels and rates carefully. A graph of inflation that is falling shows prices still rising, more slowly. A graph of the current account that is less negative shows a deficit narrowing, not a surplus. This is one of the most common errors in Section III, and it is entirely avoidable.

Spread the stimulus through the response. Using all of it in the introduction and none afterwards is a common pattern, and it reads as box-ticking. The strongest responses come back to the stimulus in most body paragraphs, each time for a different purpose.

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Bring your own data

The stimulus is the minimum, not the whole of your evidence. Section III questions are set months before the exam, so the stimulus is usually a year or more out of date by the time you sit it. The 2025 balance of payments graph ran only to 2024. Your own current figures extend the stimulus to the present and show the marker you know where the story went next.

For 2026, if a balance of payments question appears, the stimulus is likely to stop well before the June quarter 2026 current account deficit of $27.2 billion, driven by record fuel and passenger vehicle imports. Adding that figure turns a description of the stimulus into an analysis of a trend that is still moving. Our 2026 economy review has the current figures for every major topic.

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Choosing between Question 25 and Question 26

Choose on the question, not the stimulus. Students sometimes pick the question with the friendlier-looking graph, then discover they have less to say about the topic. The stimulus is there to help you and it helps equally in both. Your knowledge of the topic is what differs.

Use your reading time for this. Read both Section III questions and both Section IV questions in the five minutes before writing starts, and decide. Don't reconsider once you've started writing Section II.

It is also worth knowing which topics tend to land here. Our past papers analysis shows that the balance of payments and the exchange rate carried a Section III question in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025, so Topic 2 is the area to be most comfortable with in this section.

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The 35 minutes

Five minutes reading and planning. Twenty-five to twenty-eight minutes writing. A couple of minutes at the end to check that every part of the question has been addressed and that your final paragraph makes a judgement if the verb requires one.

In 25 minutes of writing most students produce four to five body paragraphs. That is enough. Section III does not reward length for its own sake. It rewards a response where every paragraph uses evidence (stimulus and own) to advance one argument.

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How to practise

Take the Section III questions from 2020 to 2025. For each one, do only the five-minute method: break down the question, annotate the stimulus, plan with both columns. Do all twelve in an afternoon. You will start to notice how the stimulus is chosen and what it typically leaves out, which is exactly what you need to fill.

Then write two in full under time, and mark them against the guideline, checking one thing above all: did you synthesise, or did you narrate? Our worked solutions include paragraph plans for every Section III question since 2015, and our essay structure guide covers the paragraph-level writing.