1. Negative Externalities

Article explaining the basics of negative production and consumption externalities. [Details...]

2. Credibility of Economic Policy

This Learning Module will introduce you to the issue of economic policy credibility. Using a simple formal model, you can see how differences in public beliefs can cause the same policy action to produce different outcomes. For an analytical framework to evaluate public beliefs, examine six concepts relating to the credibility of economic policy. For real world experience, there are case summaries for you to consider. [Details...]

3. Common Pool Resource Game

This program sets up a multi-person game in which each person chooses an "effort" that represents a resource extraction activity (e.g. fishing). The resource is taken from a common pool in the sense that a person's share of the harvest equals their share of the total effort. [Details...]

4. Models of non-linear common-pool resource experiments

A model of appropriation games, non-linear common-pool resource experiments conducted by Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker. (Ostrom, Gardner, and Walker (1994): Rules, games, and common-pool resources, The University of Michigan Press, Michigan) [Details...]

5. Rent Seeking Lobbying Game

This program sets up a multi-person game in which each person chooses a lobbying "effort" that represents real resources used in an attempt to obtain a prize (e.g. a broadcasting license). [Details...]

6. Enterprise Restructuring in the former Soviet Union

Citizens of the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) have recognized the potential benefits, observed in many different cultures and societies around the world, of private, market-driven enterprises. For more than half a century enterprises in the FSU have been subject to comprehensive state ownership and central planning. Prices and financing were typically of little concern to enterprise management, while workers did not have to worry about job security and received a wide range of social benefits through enterprises. While moving toward private, market-driven enterprises offers great promise for an improved standard of living for the average person, such a transition represents a fundamental social, psychological, and economic challenge. [Details...]