Business Economics and Public Policy
Simulation Statistics
Duration: under 20 minutes/game
Modality: synchronous; in-class or remote learning
Author: Judd Kessler
Subject: Business, Economics, Public Policy
Learner Level: High School, Undergraduate, Graduate, and Executive Education Programs
Team Size: Individual Play
This interactive game bundle brings core behavioral economic concepts to life through engaging, hands-on experiences. Players explore trust, incentives, fairness, and market failures by stepping into decision-making roles as managers, workers, buyers, and sellers, revealing how behavior often deviates from standard economic predictions.
Simulettes Included
Supply and Demand: Finding the Market Price
Participants take on the role of buyers or sellers, each with their own willingness to pay or accept. Through their interactions, demand and supply curves emerge, revealing the market-clearing price and number of trades. This simulette can be used to teach basic market dynamics or to show behavioral concepts like the endowment effect.
Control: Productivity vs Micromanagement
Built off the classic “Hidden Cost of Control” paradigm, play as either managers deciding whether to set productivity requirements or workers deciding how hard they would work under certain work requirements.
Moral Hazard: Trust & Ethics in Business Dealings
Tackling the classic Principal-Agent problem, principals must decide whether to trust their partner with an investment, while agents decide if they should keep or return the investment they received from their partner.
Public Good: Cooperation in Community Settings
A contribution to benefit everyone is on the table. But while contribution is socially beneficial it is personally costly, creating a tension between what is best for the group and best for the individual.
Ultimatum: Splitting the Pie, Inequity vs Equality
Modeling a classic bargaining game, users playing as a “Proposer” suggest how to split a sum of money between themselves and their partner. The “Responder” accepts or rejects the offer. If the offer is rejected, both parties get zero.
Adverse Selection: Product Quality Transparency
Users play as buyers and sellers in a market. In one round, product quality is known; in the next, product quality is unknown, and adverse selection rears its head.
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About the Author
Professor Judd B. Kessler is the inaugural Howard Marks Endowed Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In 2021, Kessler was awarded the prestigious Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize for his path-breaking scholarship. For his work on organ allocation, Kessler was named one of the “30 under 30” in Law and Policy by Forbes. He is an award-winning teacher whose courses are popular among undergraduates, MBAs, PhD students, and executives, as well as a sought-after speaker. His research and writing have been featured in leading media, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, Harvard Business Review, Politico, NPR, Hidden Brain, and Freakonomics, among others. He received a bachelor’s degree, MA, and PhD from Harvard University and an MPhil from the University of Cambridge. At Harvard, Kessler trained with Nobel laureate Alvin E. Roth, one of the founders of market design, the area in which he has been conducting research for the past fifteen years.
In 2025, he released his book, Lucky By Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want, which pulls back the curtain on hidden markets that determine who gets what in everyday life—and how to tip the scales in our favor. Read More.
Testimonial
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Wharton affiliated?
- Contact Learning Lab to use in your classes: learninglab@wharton.upenn.edu
Outside of Wharton?
- This simulation is currently only available for Wharton use; check back soon for updates on availability.