Teaching Economics with Games
Whenever I taught Principles of Micro or Macro, there would be days that I brought candy to class. Also iced tea, cookies, dice, monopoly money – you get the picture. All of the above and other props were to play little games in class. Not because you need props to teach teach economics, but learning concepts through games, through simplified models often help explain in a few minutes what a whole class and a chapter may not do as well. A student who has just turned down a fourth Kit Kat bar that is free does not need diminishing marginal utility explained to them because they experienced it when the sweet treat became way too much for a single class.
These games are some of the online versions of those same in-class game sessions. Each one runs the same way the classroom games did, with a little tweaks made so anyone can play it: you play first, and the concept is explained after you’ve already lived it. The games are simple enough – no real instructions needed. And instead of real classmates, you will have a few simulated ones instead — (and some of them may seem familiar if you’ve been around this site) — and every game ends with your own choices plotted back at you, plus a short quiz.
You don’t need any accounts, and there are no downloads. Each takes five to ten minutes. Play them in any order. If you teach, each game has instructor settings tucked into its start screen, and the write-up behind the whole collection is in Useful and easy games to play in class.
The first five · Foundations
scarcity, choice, and what a market actually doesThe Candy Game
Eat candy until it stops being fun. That turns out to be the whole theory of consumer choice.
Mixers or Butter
Run an economy that can’t have everything, and draw your own production possibilities frontier from the choices you make.
The Iced Tea Experiment
A reverse auction on a hot day reveals the demand curve that was hiding in the classroom all along.
The Tragedy of the Commons
Fish a shared lake with your neighbors. Try not to empty it. (You’ll probably empty it.)
The Voting Game
Same voters, same preferences, three different winners — depending only on how you count.
Markets, information, and trade
what happens when somebody knows something you don’tThe Grade Game
Design a syllabus. Watch ten students optimize it into something you never intended.
The Lemon Lot
Twelve used cars, twelve sellers who all say theirs runs great. Some of them are even telling the truth.
Two Islands
Your island is worse at producing everything. Trade anyway — and end up consuming beyond your own frontier.
The Dorm Party
Your music, their exam, and a cost that lands on someone who never chose it. Then: let them bargain.
Panic, beliefs, and (ir)rationality
markets made of mindsThe Bank Run
The bank is perfectly fine. Unless everyone believes it isn’t — in which case it isn’t.
The Beauty Contest
Guess two-thirds of the class average. Everyone else is guessing what you’ll guess about their guess.
The Ticket Problem
You already paid for the tickets. The sleet outside doesn’t care. Should you?