1. Voting Game

This program sets up a situation in which each person is a voter in a committee meeting or election. The voters must choose between a fixed number of alternatives. These alternatives can be thought of as either candidates or committee decisions. The alternatives will be labeled A, B, etc., unless you specify other labels. [Details...]

2. Iowa Electronic Markets

The Iowa Electronic Markets are real-money futures markets in which contract payoffs depend on economic and political events such as elections. These markets are operated by faculty at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business as part of our research and teaching mission. [Details...]

3. A Budget Balancing Game

Regular peace time budget deficits are a relatively recent phenomenon in the U.S. Crain and Muris attribute this not to an adoption of Keynesian counter-cyclical policies or any other ideological shift, but to a restructuring of the congressional budget process. They claim that the rise of the subcommittee system and limitations on the appropriations committee created a common-pool problem with the "general fund." Each subcommittee will overgraze the common fund, that is they will recommend increasing spending on projects overseen by their own committee and funded out of general revenues. At the same time they will hope that the other subcommittees will show restraint. A classroom game can easily show students both the common-pool model of budget deficits and illustrate why small items in your budget are relatively price-inelastic. [Details...]