Paper 4 — The Global Economy
Frequency and Boundaries
SIGNAL · WEC14 Topic Frequency and Grade Boundaries — compiled 2026-09-28. Completes this
paper's technique-hub build alongside forge-exam-technique-guide.md (technique) and
codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md (definitions/KAA bank). Not affiliated with or
endorsed by Pearson Edexcel.
WEC14 Topic Frequency and Grade Boundaries (Unit 4: Developments in the Global Economy)
How to use this document
Two short reference tables, nothing else. The frequency table shows which spec sub-sections the real archive shows being tested repeatedly, so you can weight revision time — it is not a prediction of what the next paper contains, and it is stated as "seen in N of M series checked," never as a probability. The grade-boundaries table is real, Pearson-published raw-mark data, verified directly for this document — use it to calibrate how many marks a grade has needed historically, not to predict a future boundary.
1. Topic frequency table
Basis and denominator. research/veridian/WEC14-verified-facts.md read 14 real series'
question papers and mark schemes (October 2020–January 2025), 13 of which also have an
examiner report — June 2021 has a question paper and mark scheme in the archive but no
examiner report, confirmed directly in that file's own "Series coverage log," so no
candidate-performance commentary is cited for it anywhere below. A separate, narrower pass
later added one real question from June 2025 (Publications Code WEC14_01_2506_MS) — that
series is cited separately below and is not counted in the "14" or "13" denominators,
since only isolated questions from it were checked, not the full paper.
"Seen in N of 14" below counts only series where the facts bank (or the FORGE/CODEX documents built from it) cite a specific, named instance of that sub-section being tested — a Section A MCQ, a Section B part, or a Section C essay. This is a lower bound built from documented citations, not a fresh line-by-line recount of all 14 raw papers: a low count can mean "not sampled in this pass" as much as "not tested," and is flagged as such where relevant.
| Spec § | Topic | Seen in | Tariff(s) | Series / note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.3.1 | Globalisation — characteristics, causes, effects | 5 of 14 | Sec A MCQ; Sec B source booklet; Sec C essay | Oct 2021, Jan 2022 (Q8 essay), Jun 2022 (Q1 MCQ), Oct 2022 (Q9 essay), Oct 2024. Jun 2025 Q7(a)/(b) also confirmed — outside the 14-count. |
| 4.3.2.1 | Specialisation & comparative advantage | 4 of 14 | Sec A MCQ only | Oct 2020, Jan 2022, Oct 2024, Jan 2025 — reliably well-answered except Jan 2022 Q5 and Oct 2024 Q4. |
| 4.3.2.2 | Patterns & volume of world trade | 1 of 14 | Sec C essay | Jan 2024 Q9 only — the weakest-scoring of that series' three Section C options. |
| 4.3.2.3 | Terms of trade | 8 of 14 | Sec A MCQ; Sec B Q7(a) calc; Sec C essay | MCQ named the single weakest Section A question in 5 of 13 examiner reports checked (Jun 2022, Oct 2022, Jan 2023, Jun 2023, Jun 2024) — the strongest single finding in the whole archive. Calculation-error pattern also in Oct 2020, Oct 2023; essay in Oct 2023 (Q8). |
| 4.3.2.4 | Trade liberalisation & trading blocs | 2 of 14 | Sec B definition; Sec C essay | Jan 2022 Q7(c) (customs union), Jan 2023 Q8 (CPTPP). Sub-point (d), conflicts between blocs and the WTO: 0 of 14 — no matching question found in the sampled archive. |
| 4.3.2.5 | Restrictions on free trade | 5 of 14 | Sec A MCQ (tariff-diagram areas); Sec C essay | Oct 2020, Oct 2021, Oct 2022 (Q10 essay), Jan 2023, Jan 2025 (steel-tariff MCQ). |
| 4.3.3.1–.3 | Balance of payments, exchange rates, competitiveness | 10 of 14 | Sec A MCQ; Sec B parts; Sec C essay | Jan 2021, Oct 2021, Jan 2022, Jun 2022, Oct 2022, Oct 2023, Jan 2024, Jun 2024, Oct 2024, Jan 2025 — deepest, most consistent coverage in the archive per the facts bank; the three lettered sub-points are usually tested together in one source booklet, not separably. |
| 4.3.4.1 | Poverty — definitions & measures | 2 of 14 | Sec B 4-mark "explain" | Jan 2021 Q7(c) (relative poverty — only 6% scored full marks), Oct 2024 Q7(b) (absolute poverty). |
| 4.3.4.2 | Inequality — Lorenz curve, Gini, causes | 7 of 14 | Sec A MCQ; Sec C essay | Oct 2020, Oct 2021, Jun 2022 (Q10 essay), Oct 2022, Jun 2023 (Q10 essay), Oct 2023, Jan 2024 (Q8 essay). |
| 4.3.5.1 | Public expenditure | 0 of 14 | — | No standalone test found in the 14-series archive. The only confirmed Section C essay built around this sub-point is June 2025 Q10 (Italy) — outside this count and checked in a later, narrower pass. |
| 4.3.5.2 | Taxation | 3 of 14 | Sec A MCQ; Sec C essay | Jan 2022 Q4 (MCQ), Jun 2022 Q8 (essay, top income-tax rate), Oct 2023 Q7(e) (Laffer curve). |
| 4.3.5.3 | Borrowing & national debt | 4 of 14 | Sec B Q7(a)/(b) calc + definition | Oct 2020, Jun 2022, Jan 2024, Jan 2025 — the most common Q7(a) calculation pairing in the archive. |
| 4.3.5.4 | Macroeconomic policies | 2 of 14 | Sec B | Oct 2022 Q7(d) (fiscal/monetary confusion), Oct 2023 Q7(d) (IMF/World Bank confusion). |
| 4.3.6.1 | Measures of development (HDI) | 2 of 14 | Sec C essay stem | Jan 2022 Q10, Jan 2024 Q10 — real HDI figures anchor both stems. |
| 4.3.6.2 | Constraints on growth/development | 4 of 14 | Sec A MCQ; Sec B/C | Jan 2021 Q2 (MCQ), Jan 2022 Q2 (MCQ) + Q10 (essay), Oct 2021 Q7(e), Jan 2024 Q10. |
| 4.3.6.3 | Measures to promote growth/development | 7 of 14* | Sec A MCQ; Sec B; Sec C essay | Oct 2021, Oct 2022, Jun 2023 (Q9, institutions), Jan 2024, Jun 2024 (Q7(e)), Jan 2025 (MCQ), plus Jun 2021 Q9 (debt relief — the one real past question in question-bank/wec14.ts). *Jun 2021's mark scheme is real and counted; no examiner-report commentary exists for it (see denominator note above). |
Reading this table honestly. It reflects what the source documents happened to cite while building the technique and definitions layers, not an independent re-audit of all 14 papers against every lettered sub-point from scratch. Rows with 0–2 hits (4.3.5.1, 4.3.2.4(d), 4.3.2.2, 4.3.4.1) are more likely under-counted than genuinely rare — "under-sampled," not "unimportant." The one exception is 4.3.2.4(d), which two separate passes of the facts bank actively searched for and did not find — a real "not found," not just "not yet counted."
2. Grade boundaries
Real, published Pearson data — none of the figures below are invented. Fetched directly
from qualifications.pearson.com's own Grade Boundaries PDFs for International Advanced
Level and cross-checked with pdftotext -layout against the WEC14 row specifically, for this
document, on 2026-09-28. Raw mark, out of 80 (Section A 6 + Section B 34 + Section C 40).
| Series | A* | A | B | C | D | E |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 2023 | 59 | 51 | 44 | 38 | 32 | 26 |
| Oct 2023 | 56 | 50 | 44 | 38 | 32 | 27 |
| Jan 2024 | 58 | 52 | 46 | 40 | 34 | 28 |
| Jun 2024 | 56 | 50 | 44 | 38 | 32 | 26 |
| Oct 2024 | 60 | 54 | 48 | 42 | 36 | 30 |
| Jan 2025 | 58 | 53 | 48 | 43 | 38 | 33 |
| Jun 2025 | 61 | 56 | 51 | 46 | 41 | 36 |
| Oct 2025 | 60 | 54 | 48 | 42 | 36 | 31 |
| Jan 2026 | 57 | 52 | 47 | 42 | 37 | 33 |
| Jun 2026 | 60 | 54 | 48 | 42 | 36 | 31 |
Across these ten series, the A* boundary has ranged 56–61/80 and the E (minimum pass) boundary 26–36/80 — stated as a range only, not a trend claim, since no analysis of cohort size or paper difficulty was done for this document.
Genuine gap, stated rather than guessed at. The examiner-report archive this course's research draws on runs October 2020–January 2025. Grade boundaries were only located and verified back to January 2023 for this document — October 2020 through October 2022 were not searched for in this pass. Do not assume they match the range above; they are unverified, not absent from Pearson's own records.
Sources (fetched and verified directly for this document, 2026-09-28), all under
qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/Grade-boundaries/International-A-level/:
2301-ial-subject-grade-boundaries-v1.pdf (Jan 2023) · 2310-ial-subject-grade-boundaries.pdf
(Oct 2023) · 2401-ial-subject-grade-boundaries.pdf (Jan 2024) ·
grade-boundaries-june-2024-international-advanced-level.pdf (Jun 2024) ·
2410-ial-subject-grade-boundaries.pdf (Oct 2024) · 2501-ial-subject-grade-boundaries.pdf
(Jan 2025) · grade-boundaries-june-2025-international-advanced-level.pdf (Jun 2025) ·
2510-ial-subject-grade-boundaries.pdf (Oct 2025) · 2601-ial-subject-grade-boundaries.pdf
(Jan 2026) · grade-boundaries-june-2026-international-advanced-level.pdf (Jun 2026). Each was
fetched fresh; its WEC14 Unit 4: Developments in the Global Economy row was extracted
directly, not copied from a third-party tracker. Pearson's tables also print a separate
"WEC14 Unit 4A" row on some series (a different assessment code); every figure above is
the plain "Unit 4" row matching this paper.
Provenance: this document, forge-exam-technique-guide.md and
codex-definitions-and-application-bank.md together complete WEC14's technique-hub build,
compiled 2026-09-28.