Economics is more relevant now than ever before. In the last decade, the global economy has been blighted by an historic financial crisis, and national economies have been tested to their limits in response. Austerity in Britain and sovereign debt crises abroad have heightened the tension and, since the 2016 referendum, Britain is also negotiating the most complex arrangement in its history – its removal from the EU, a highly integrated economic and political organisation. In Europe and America, central tenets of free market economics are challenged by populist policy-makers concerned with rising rates of inequality or dwindling living standards. Meanwhile, at the international stage, globalization has experienced a crisis of confidence, with America electing a President partly committed to dismantling an economic system created by the United States. There is simply no better way to understand the full implications of this situation, as well as the causes for it and the potential solutions to it, than by studying Economics at A level.