Why the AD Curve Slopes Downward
Ann Werboff, Northern Arizona University
Students will create a sequence of events for the three effects that determine the inverse relationship between price level and GDP that determine the shape of the Aggregate Demand (AD) curve. They will also be ...

Price Ceilings and Venezuela
Elisa Queenan, Porterville College
This activity will examine a modern instance of price ceilings and the unintended consequences for the local economy. This activity details how the well-intended goal of a government can lead to disincentivizing ...

Identifying Market Structure in the Fast Food Industry
Ezra Pugh, Glendale Community College
Students use data to determine whether the fast food industry more closely resembles a monopoly, monopolistic competition, or oligopoly, then decide whether regulation is warranted.

Are Imports Bad for the Economy?
Ishani Tewari, Curry College
Students learning the expenditure approach often conclude that "imports reduce GDP." The activity attempts to dispel this misconception and pushes students to think about imports as an accounting variable ...

US China Trade War - An Application of the AD/AS Model
Ann Werboff, Northern Arizona University
In this activity, students will analyze some of the events in the US China Trade War in 2018 using the AD/AS model and discuss the implications of tariffs.

Keeping Each Other in Check – Oligopolists' Strategic Interaction
George Orlov, Cornell University-Endowed Colleges
Students will examine the behavior of two large oligopolists, deciding on which factors serve as the biggest deterrents to the firms' collusion. The main factor preventing collusion is the temptation to ...

Shutdown Decisions – The Role of Variable and Fixed Costs
George Orlov, Cornell University-Endowed Colleges
Students will discuss full and partial shutdown decisions in a context of a small business (bagel shop) which, with the advent of cold weather, considers closing its patio, keeping it open and putting up heating ...

Price Elasticity of Demand
Doug McKee, Cornell University-Endowed Colleges
Teams are given a list of goods and asked to identify what they think are the most elastic and least elastic.

The Tax Game: What are fair and effective tax rates?
Mark Maier, Glendale Community College
Based on an online simulation teams choose from five tax regimes that each collect the same tax revenue but do so with different tax rates. Teams predict the impact of their tax choices and then, based on the ...

U.S. Economic Growth and Inflation Since 1970
Bill Goffe, Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus
Students are given a number of variables to retrieve from FRED and from them they identify the behavior of U.S. inflation and economic growth since 1970.