About Ricardian Explorer

Ricardian Explorer is an interactive computer game that simulates the functioning of a simple model of international trade.

The players are producer-consumers whose ultimate objective is to consume a balanced basket of goods.  As in conventional economic models, their consumption decisions are guided by the desire to maximize a utility function that is increasing in the quantities of goods consumed.  The players’ score in the game is equal to the utility of the goods they have consumed.

Before the game starts, each player is randomly assigned to a country. 

The game is divided into several rounds.  At the beginning of each round, players are assigned a number of hours of labor they can use to produce different goods.  As in David Ricardo’s model of international trade, unit labor requirements, the number of hours of labor needed to produce one unit of a good, vary across countries.  As a result of this variation, countries have comparative advantage in different goods, making international trade potentially profitable.

During each round, players produce goods using their labor, trade goods in the market, and consume.  Trading goods can potentially allow a player to reach a higher utility than would be possible by just producing and consuming.

The Ricardian Explorer game has been designed as a tool to complement conventional courses in international trade.  Because it also provides insights into the functioning of markets and general equilibrium models, it can also be fruitfully used in introductory and intermediate microeconomics courses.  In addition, because the game provides information about how real individuals make decisions in the context of a textbook economic model, it provides data that experimental economists can use to learn about economics decision-making.

Work on the Ricardian Explorer started on the spring of 2002 at Wesleyan University.  The team includes Alberto Isgut (Economics), Ganesan Ravishanker (ITS), Tanya Rosenblat (Economics), and Mike Roy (ITS).

web site designed by Anthony Attiogbe