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Important Updates

New AP Course Pacing Guide
This pacing guide (.pdf/169.82 KB), designed for classrooms that have only completed approximately 25% of typical course content by January, can help students develop their knowledge and skills by May. If your students are ahead of this pace, you’ll be able to incorporate additional days or weeks to spend more time on challenging topics, practice course skills, or begin reviewing for the exam.

AP Daily and AP Classroom
Short, searchable AP Daily videos can be assigned alongside topic questions to help you cover all course content, skills, and task models, and check student understanding. Unlock personal progress checks so students can demonstrate their knowledge and skills unit by unit and use the progress dashboard to highlight progress and additional areas for support. As the exam approaches, assign AP practice exams in the AP Classroom question bank and encourage students to take advantage of AP Daily: Live Review sessions April 19–29.

Sign In to AP Classroom

Course Overview

AP Macroeconomics is an introductory college-level macroeconomics course. Students cultivate their understanding of the principles that apply to an economic system as a whole by using principles and models to describe economic situations and predict and explain outcomes with graphs, charts, and data as they explore concepts like economic measurements, markets, macroeconomic models, and macroeconomic policies.

Course Content

Based on the Understanding by Design® (Wiggins and McTighe) model, the course framework provides a clear and detailed description of the course requirements necessary for student success. The framework specifies what students must know, be able to do, and understand, with a focus on big ideas that encompass core principles and theories of the discipline. The framework also encourages instruction that prepares students for advanced economics coursework.

The AP Macroeconomics framework is organized into six commonly taught units of study that provide one possible sequence for the course. As always, you have the flexibility to organize the course content as you like.

 Unit
 Exam Weighting (Multiple-Choice Section)
 Unit 1: Basic Economic Concepts  5%–10%
 Unit 2: Economic Indicators and the Business Cycle  12%–17%
 Unit 3: National Income and Price Determination  17%–27%
 Unit 4: Financial Sector  18%–23%
 Unit 5: Long-Run Consequences of Stabilization Policies  20%–30%
 Unit 6: Open Economy—International Trade and Finance  10%–13%

Course Skills

The AP Macroeconomics framework included in the course and exam description outlines distinct skills that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to think and act like economists.

 Skill
 Description
 1. Principles and Models  Define economic principles and models.
 2. Interpretation  Explain given economic outcomes.
 3. Manipulation  Determine outcomes of specific economic situations.
 4. Graphing and Visuals  Model economic situations using graphs or visual representations.

AP and Higher Education

Higher education professionals play a key role developing AP courses and exams, setting credit and placement policies, and scoring student work. The AP Higher Education site features information on recruitment and admission, advising and placement, and more.

This chart shows recommended scores for granting credit, and how much credit should be awarded, for each AP course. Your students can look up credit and placement policies for colleges and universities on the AP Credit Policy Search.

Meet the Development Committee for AP Macroeconomics.


Instructional Support