We are currently working on the Beer Game by John Sterman, a classic about Supply Chain Management (for the economics-games.com site). More information: http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/SDG/beergame.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_distribution_game If you have feedbacks/suggestions, or want to beta-test the game in your classroom, contact us! #econded #teachEcon #busedu #SupplyChain by

  Jieying Hong, Sophie Moinas, and Sébastien Pouget have written a very interesting experimental and theoretical extension to the Bubble Game, studying learning in speculative bubbles. A great extension to direct your students to, after running the bubble game on our site.     Abstract of the paper: “Does traders’ experience reduce their propensity to participate in speculate bubbles? This paper studies this issue from a theoretical and an experimental viewpoint. We focus on a game in which bubbles, if they arise, are irrational, as in the Smith, Suchanek, and Williams (1988)’s set up. Our theoretical results are based on Camerer and Ho (1999)’s Experience-Weighted Attraction learning model. Adaptive traders are assumed to adjust their behavior according to actions’ past performance. In the long run, learning induces the market to converge to the unique no bubble equilibrium. However, learning initially increases traders’ propensity to speculate. In the short run, more experienced traders thus create more bubbles. An experiment shows that bubbles are very pervasive despite the fact that subjects have become experienced. Our estimation of the EWA model also indicates that learning is at work.” by

We have just added a new experiment: “A Classroom Inflation Uncertainty Experiment” by Denise Hazlett (IREE 2007). The paper is available on the site of the journal, and the game is in the “macro section” on our site.     Abstract of the paper: “This classroom experiment uses a double oral auction credit market to demonstrate how inflation uncertainty causes a wealth transfer between borrowers and lenders. The experiment also shows the social cost of inflation uncertainty when borrowers and lenders cannot agree on a nominal interest rate that compensates each for their risk. In this case, the credit market fails to allocate funds to the highest-valued investment projects. The experiment provides hands-on experience with the effects of anticipated and unanticipated inflation, giving students a common background for a discussion of the economic costs of inflation. It can be used in principles, intermediate macroeconomics,money and banking, or financial economics courses, with 8–60 students…” by

We have just added a new experiment: “Contracting under Incomplete Information and Social Preferences: An Experimental Study” by Eva Hoppe and Patrick Schmitz (RES 2013). The paper is available on the site of the journal, and the game is in the “information asymmetry section” on our site.     Abstract of the paper: “Principal-agent models in which the agent has access to private information before a contract is signed are a cornerstone of contract theory. We have conducted an experiment with 720 participants to explore whether the theoretical insights are rejected by the behavior of subjects in the laboratory and to what extent deviations from standard theory can be explained by social preferences. Investigating settings with both exogenous and endogenous information structures, we find that agency theory is indeed useful to qualitatively predict how variations in the degree of uncertainty affect subjects’ behavior. Regarding the quantitative deviations from standard predictions, our analysis based on several control treatments and quantal response estimations shows that agents’ behavior can be explained by social preferences that are less pronounced than in conventional ultimatum games. Principalsíown social preferences are not an important determinant of their behavior. However, when the principals make contract offers, they anticipate […]

For those of you who design research experiments with the oTree software (http://www.otree.org/) and want to run them on Amazon mTurk. During the WZB oTree hackathon, we worked, with Essi Kujansuu and Philipp Chapkovski on developing special pages intended to help doing this, when the experiment involves interactions between the participants. Most of the features deal with the dropout/”participant synchronization” problems: 1 – Participants can be offered to do a specific task while waiting for other players to arrive (to ensure that they remain “available” and ready to start the experiment while they wait). 2 – You can offer participants to finish part of the experiment (or just a part of it) if they have been waiting for too long. 3 – It is possible to pay participants for their tasks or for the time they spent on the wait page. … The project, mturk-oTree-utils, runs on oTree 1.4, and you can find it, along with more details (in the readme file), here: https://github.com/chapkovski/custom-waiting-page-for-mturk by

This week, we are adding a Trading Pit Market Experiment, a la Vernon Smith, including price ceilings and price floors, and unit taxes. The experiment is based on this guide (written by Antonio Cabrales for the coreecon manual). An extended version, including several countries and international traders will be introduced in a few weeks.   First page of the guide of the experiment (A. Cabrales for coreecon): “This experiment is used to introduce students to the working of competitive markets. As The Economy explains in more detail in unit 8, the experiment was first run in 1948 by Edward Chamberlin, whose results were quite different from what equilibrium theory would predict. Later, at the beginning of the 1960’s, Vernon Smith reran the experiments with two key innovations: firstly the prices of agreed trades were made public, the second was to repeat the game several times, with the participants keeping the same valuation in each round. Both the design of the history and the experiment serve various pedagogical objectives, which we now discuss. The experiment is actually quite different from the way many students picture “demand and supply” when one teaches it to them. It is important that they understand that […]

  … And the Winner of the Economics Tournament is … HEC Montréal !! Toulouse School of Economics, who was 1st from Year 2 to Year 4, ends the game at the 2nd place. Cardiff Metropolitan University also stands on the podium with a great 3rd place!     Here is the complete ranking of the Final: HEC Montréal Toulouse School of Economics Cardiff Metropolitan University CentraleSupélec Universidad de Málaga Ecole Centrale de Marseille Ecole Nationale Polytechnique (ENP) – Algeria University of Glasgow IMT Atlantique Athens University of Economics and Business Aston University … ENSAE ParisTech was also qualified to the Final.   Congratulations to you all, this was a hard competition! Among the 31 teams, from 14 countries, who registered, 24 finished the qualification game and 12 qualified to the Final.   by

The 12 teams to qualify for the finals are (unranked list) : Cardiff Metropolitan University Aston University HEC Montréal CentraleSupélec École nationale de la statistique et de l’administration économique Athens University of Economics and Business – Οικονομικό Παν. Αθηνών University of Glasgow Universidad de Málaga Ecole Nationale Polytechnique d’Alger Toulouse School of Economics IMT Atlantique Ecole Centrale de Marseille Congratulations! It was a pretty hard competition between the 31 teams that registered. Qualifying required a score above 1 313 343 € . We would like to thank the teams who did not qualify, for taking part in our tournament and we hope that you found it fun! Scores are now reset, for the finals that will take place next week. Qualified Teams will receive instructions in the next hours by regular email. by

We are launching a new (free) inter-university student tournament, based on an industrial organization simulation (close to those that are described here: https://lud.io). The qualification phase consists in playing 6 years of a mono-player simulation, between now and before November the 23th, 2017 (vs robots behaving like humans did, in previous experiments) .  You can play when you want, at your own pace. The 12 best teams will be qualified for the finals (and scores will be reset). The finals will be played between November the 27th and December the 2nd, 2017: Players will have to enter one decision every day, before 21h CET. Both phases are played online.     The winning team will be awarded a voucher around 300€ as a first prize (on amazon or a similar site). Students can participate on their own, with no need of support from their instructors: The game will require some strategic thinking but there is no prerequisite in economics. This should be fun, so join the tournament! One team (2-4 players) from any university or school is welcome to participate (Registration is now closed) You can also register to the facebook event, to stay informed: https://www.facebook.com/events/1963638390559162 by

This week, we are adding “Can Contracts Solve the Hold-Up Problem?” by Eva Hoppe and Patrick Schmitz (Games and Economic Behavior 2011). The paper is available on the site of the journal, and the game is in the “industrial organization section” on our site.     Abstract of the paper: “In the contract-theoretic literature, there is a vital debate about whether contracts can mitigate the hold-up problem, in particular when renegotiation cannot be prevented. Ultimately, this question has to be answered empirically. As a first step, we have conducted a laboratory experiment with 960 participants. We consider investments that directly benefit the non-investing party. While according to standard theory, contracting would be useless if renegotiation cannot be ruled out, we find that option contracts significantly improve investment incentives compared to a no-contract treatment. This finding might be attributed to Hart and Mooreʼs (2008) recent idea that contracts can serve as reference points.” by