International Trade games

[Edward Perry]

Hello all,

Many thanks to ClassEx for providing so many excellent games. 

One of the classes I teach is International Trade. Tariffs are a very important topic right now and it would be excellent to demonstrate how international trade and tariffs work with games. I'm curious if anyone else would be interested in creating a new folder of games on international trade. There are at least three types of games that would be interesting: 

1. The International Apple Market Game. This would be just like that Apple Market Game, but students would initially be split into two regions (e.g., the North and South). In the initial rounds, they would only trade in their own regions, so there would be different equilibrium prices and quantities in each region. In the later rounds, trade would be opened up, and a single world price would emerge, along with trade patterns, changes in surplus, etc.

2. The International Apple Market Game with Tariffs. Now the game would begin with free trade in both regions. In the later rounds, a tariff would be imposed by one region (say the North). This would show how tariffs affect trade, prices, etc. This could be executed with either the world price unaffected by a tariff (small country case) or affected by a tariff (large country case). 

3. The International Labor Market Game. This would be identical to the game in (1) but with the labor market instead of the apple market. This would demonstrate how migration affects trade and economic surplus. 

These are the three I could think of but there could be others. I do not have experience with modifying/creating games on ClassEx but would be willing to learn if there is substantial interest. If someone else is experienced and is interested, please let me know, and we can work together. There could even be a publication that comes out of this. 

Thanks,

Ed

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Edward D. Perry, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Agricultural Economics
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66502

edp...@ksu.edu

[Marcus Giamattei (classEx Team)]

Dear Edward,

your ideas sound really interesting. I want to encourage you to go forward with it. As for my part (as one of the co-founders) I am currently in the middle of teaching I have little resources myself atm but I am happy to help out with some hints here and there if needed. I checked the original book by Bergstrom and Miller (where most market experiments are based). They have no game with tariffs. But the apple market could be a starting point.

I also want to indicate some games that may point in a similar direction that I use in my class on International Monetary Economics. You can find them in the ready-made games.

Exchange rate and Purchasing Power Parity: Participants are based in US and DE and sell goods to each other. Then inflation in the US occurs and students experience the PPP. This could be also a nice blueprint for implementing the tariffs.

Interest Rate Parity: Participants trade dollar bonds and Euro bonds. (called Fish and Rabbit in the Experiment). This establishes the interest rate parity.

Best, Marcus

[Marcus Giamattei (classEx Team)]

In the Repository you can find the following game: Gains from Trade - Robinson Crusoe V2 (if you search for the name you can import it to your account). It is fish and coconut water with autarky and trade.