A Savings/Consumption Game For Introductory Macroeconomics

Jurgen Brauer

Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

Non-computerized experiment

Earlier this year, I took a first step at building a compendium of non-computerized classroom games for college-level economics classes (Brauer, 1994). I discovered that there are a fair number of games/exercises/simulations available to cover almost al l fundamental concepts of microeconomics, but there is a dearth of games for the macroeconomics class. Here, then, is a game/simulation that can be played early on in a course on introductory macroeconomics. (I presume that it can be speeded up and 'juiced up' at the intermediate or MBA-introductory levels.) Most, perhaps all, textbooks and instructors, on the laborious way toward deriving an aggregate demand curve first derive an aggregate expenditure curve. The aggregate expenditure curve is usually built from an examination of the consumption function of private households, before an investment funct ion and then governmental expenditures and net exports are added.