Microeconomics Experiments
| Experiment Title | Experiment Description | Learning Points |
| Equilibrium Price and Quantity | Students play the role of either buyer or seller in a simulated market for used textbooks. | Demonstrates the operation of supply and demand and illustrates the concepts of equilibrium price and quantity. |
| Price Ceilings and Floors | A variation on the Equilibrium Price and Quantity experiment that incorporates price controls into the market simulation. | Examines the effects of price ceilings and floors, letting students experience firsthand the frustration of trading in a market with price controls. |
| Taxes and Welfare | A variation on the Equilibrium Price and Quantity experiment that incorporates an excise tax into the market simulation. | Examines the effects of an excise tax and demonstrates the basic (but surprising) result that the impact on buyers and sellers is the same no matter which group the tax is imposed on. |
| Tragedy of the Commons | Students play food providers who must decide whether to hunt or fish, with the "catch" that fish will not reproduce if the fish population falls below a critical level. | Demonstrates the constructive role that either government regulation or a strong system of property rights can play in this case. |
| A Market for Lemons | Students play the role of buyer or seller in a market for a good in which product quality may not be perfectly observable to buyers. | Shows how asymmetric information can lead to market failure, and also how consumer protection laws or the ability to offer warranties can restore efficiency. |
Macroeconomics Experiments
| Experiment Title | Experiment Description | Learning Points |
| Interest Rates and Investment | Students play the role of borrower or lender in a market in which they negotiate loans to fund investment projects. | Demonstrates that it is the real interest rate, not the nominal interest rate, that determines the quantity of investment in an economy. |
| Unemployment Compensation | Students play the role of worker or employer in a simulated market for jobs. | Shows that increases in the amount of unemployment compensation result in an increase in unemployment as the opportunity cost of working becomes higher. |
| Goo—Fixed Prices | Students compete to harvest the most "goo" on the fictitious planet Hermes by hiring other students in a labor market with fixed wages. | Illustrates the equation of exchange, and in particular, how changes in the money supply affect (real) GDP when prices are fixed. |
| Goo—Flexible Prices | Students compete to harvest the most "goo" on the fictitious planet Hermes by hiring other students in a labor market with flexible wages. | Illustrates the equation of exchange and demonstrates the neutrality of money in the long run: that is, when prices are flexible, changes in the money supply affect inflation but not real GDP. |
| Labor Market | Students play the role of either a company that wants to hire workers or an agency with workers available for hire. Workers' productivity, and therefore their wage, depends on the amount of capital used by companies. | Shows how growth in the capital stock leads to higher wages, while an increase in the labor supply leads to lower wages. |
