Classroom Experiments & Games
Many students respond well to being involved in a game and the experience can fix a concept vividly in their minds. We have guides and, in some cases, printable materials to help you introduce games to your classes.
Experiments and Games in Context
Economic Classroom Experiments is a chapter of the Handbook for Economics Lecturers with advice and examples.
Simulations, Games and Role-Play is an older Handbook chapter, discussing why, when and how to use games or simulations in teaching economics, with examples.
Classroom Experiments, Games and Role-Play a series of experiments and games from our Reflections on Teaching section.
IREE Volume 9 Issue 2 was a special issue on economic classroom experiments, including review papers as well as details of individual experiments.
Using Experiments and Activities in the Principles Class by John Eaton describes a number of games, used analogously to the "lab sessions" experienced by physical science students
John Sloman summarises seven games that can be used to increase student motivation (Powerpoint, with links to handouts and other materials)
Jon Guest describes using classroom experiments as a more active method of teaching microeconomics in a first-year context and an intermediate context.
The FEELE team have created an extensive guide to Economic Classroom Experiments, including The Twenty Pound Auction. It's part of Wikiversity, so you can log in to add your own experiences and variations.
Games Economists Play: Non-Computerized Classroom-Games for College Economics is an online guide to 180 games both for micro principles and macro principles (external link).
Health Economics education (HEe) lists several classroom experiments for teaching Health Economics.
Individual Games
The International Trade Game: Using just scissors, pencils, rulers and paper, large numbers of students experience a simulation of international trade.
The Tennis Balls Game: students form a "production line" to illustrate diminishing marginal returns. This is one of a number of games used by Mary Hedges and colleagues, including the oligopoly game (favourite TV show), Money Supply Game and the Restaurant Game (an auction market).
A separate page discusses some games that can be used with school students, for example on open days. These include the public goods game and rent-seeking game (both using playing cards), auctioning a £1 coin (illustrating sunk cost and marginal cost) and a public goods game with altruistic punishment.
Some journal articles describing classroom experiments and games
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A classroom game on a negative externality correcting tax: Revenue return, regressivity, and the double dividend by Joshua M. Duke & David M. Sassoon, 2017
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Student-crafted experiments “from the ground up” by Stacey Bosley, 2016
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A classroom experiment with bank equity, deposit insurance, and bailouts by Denise Hazlett, 2016
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A classroom market for extra credit: A semester-long experiment by James Staveley-O'Carroll, 2016. Using extra course credit as a kind of currency, students learn about market-clearing price.
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When do first-movers have an advantage? A Stackelberg classroom experiment by Robert Rebelein and Evsen Turkay, 2016. A two-firm game to teach first-mover and second-mover advantage
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Price discrimination: A classroom experiment by Paula Aguiló, Maria Sard & Maria Tugores, 2016. An exercise in distinguishing first-, second-, and third-degree price discrimination
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Airing Your Dirty Laundry: A Quick Marketable Pollution Permits Game for the Classroom by Jill L. Caviglia-Harris & Richard T. Melstrom, 2015. A very quick-to-run game involving tradeable permits
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Simulating Price-Taking by Lucas M. Engelhardt, 2015. Repeated rounds teach students about perfect competition
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Examining Theories of Distributive Justice with an Asymmetric Public Goods Game by Stephen J. Schmidt, 2015.
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A model to assess students’ social responsibility behavior within a classroom experiment by Amalia Rodrigo-González, María Caballer-Tarazona, 2015
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Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets: A Classroom Experiment by Ashley Hodgson, 2014. A short experiment to convey how asymmetric information manifests in health markets
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Teaching economics with a bag of chocolate: A classroom experiment for elementary school students by Nicholas G. Rupp, 2014. Uses exchanges to illustrate the value of trade and the law of demand
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Veconlab Classroom Clicker Games: The Wisdom of Crowds and the Winner's Curse by AJ Allen Bostian & Charles A. Holt, 2013.
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Choosing Partners: A Classroom Experiment by Carl T. Bergstrom, Theodore C. Bergstrom & Rodney J. Garratt, 2013. Simple, introductory exercise that illustrates two-sided matching and the idea of a stable assignment
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Using a Simple Contest to Illustrate Mechanism Design by Calvin Blackwell, 2011. Illustrates the effects of incentive structure on effort using a 50-minute session.
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Exploring Strategic Behavior in an Oligopoly Market Using Classroom Clickers by Keith Brouhle, 2011
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Illustrating Environmental Issues by Using the Production-Possibility Frontier: A Classroom Experiment by Nancy Carson & Panagiotis Tsigaris, 2011
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Teaching Bank Runs with Classroom Experiments by Dieter Balkenborg, Todd Kaplan & Timothy Miller, 2011
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A Bluff-Bidding Exercise by J. Patrick Meister, 2011
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Persuasive and Informative Advertising: A Classroom Experiment by Beth A. Freeborn & Jason P. Hulbert, 2011
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The Pollution Game: A Classroom Game Demonstrating the Relative Effectiveness of Emissions Taxes and Tradable Permits by Jay R. Corrigan, 2011
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Understanding Credit Risk: A Classroom Experiment by Maroš Servátka & George Theocharides, 2011
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Status spending races, cooperative consumption and voluntary public income disclosure by Damian Diamonov and Shane Sanders, 2011
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Tradable Discharge Permits: A Student-Friendly Game by Amy W. Ando & Donna Ramirez Harrington, 2010. See also The tradable pollution permit exercise: Three additional tools by Michael A. McPherson & Michael L. Nieswiadomy, 2014
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Discovering Economics in the Classroom with Experimental Economics and the Scottish Enlightenment by Taylor Jaworski, Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson, 2010
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Teaching Opportunity Cost in an Emissions Permit Experiment by Charles Holt, Erica Myers, Markus Wrake, Dallas Burtraw and Svante Mandell, 2010
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Experiential Learning with Experiments by Henrik Egbert and Vanessa Mertins, 2010
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Patents and R&D: a Classroom Experiment by Amy Diduch, 2010
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To Work or Not to Work … That is the Question: Labour Market Decisions in the Classroom by Arlene Garces-Ozanne and Phyll Esplin, 2010
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A Classroom Inflation Uncertainty Experiment by Denise Hazlett, 2008. Uses a double oral auction credit market to illustrate effects of inflation uncertainty.
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A Classroom Investment Coordination Experiment by Denise Hazlett, 2007. Gets students to privately choose firm's levels of investment, illustrating coordination failure
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Portfolio Construction in Global Financial Markets by Dallas Brozik and Alina M. Zapalska, 2007. Describes a portfolio management game that can be played in a single session
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Market Forces and Price Ceilings by Jamie Kruse et al. 2005 describes a market to illustrate the effects of rent controls.
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Strategic Voting and Coalitions by James Stodder, 2005. Uses a classroom game to illustrate the Concordet Voting Paradox.
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Using Context in Classroom Experiments: A Public Goods Example by John Bernard and Daria Bernard, 2005. Describes a game played on paper to introduce the concept of a public good.
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A Search-Theoretic Classroom Experiment with Money by Denise Hazlett 2003. Presents a market game in which one commodity emerges as a medium of exchange. Hazlett's site has details of six non-computerized classroom experiments for undergraduate macroeconomics courses.
Presenting Assessment as a Game
These are examples where the point of the game is not economics content, but encouraging students to participate.
- Soumaya Tohamy recreates the TV show Jeopardy in classes
- Caroline Elliott uses Noughts and Crosses to get students involved
Computerised Games
Charles Holt's VEconLab is a set of 35 interactive games that can be configured by lecturers and played by students using only their web browsers. Each game has extensive instructions (external link).
Econport is another site allowing you to run a variety of experiments using the web. They provide extensive documentation on how to integrate the experiments into courses.
Finance and Economics Experimental Laboratory at Exeter (FEELE), an FDTL5 project based at Exeter University, is creating 40, mostly computer-based, games. You can register for free to create, customise and run economic experiments online. Jon Guest's case study describes using one of these experiments in a class.
Economics-games.com is another site along similar lines.
The Teach Better podcast has an episode from July 2017 in which Matt Olczak of Aston Business School discusses using economics-games.com and VEconLab, and Bob Gazzale of the University of Toronto discusses his use of MobLab.
Events
If you would like us to visit your department to discuss using experiments or simulations in teaching, contact the Network.
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