Using Experiments with Economic Principles: Microeconomics, 2nd Edition for High School Courses

We have had a lot of interest from secondary school educators, and believe that the book should work well in this setting with some modifications. The experiments are very accessible (and fun!) for students of all levels, and so they should work just fine without any modifications (perhaps, depending on the skill of your class, you may want to limit the scope of the experiments by removing a few of the optional sessions). The lab report, discussion, and homework sections should also be directly accessible to good students (say, AP students), and even less well prepared students should be able to grasp this material sufficiently to have a high quality learning experience. In the case of less well prepared students, the instructor may want to deliver some carefully prepared lectures with a judicious choice of content.

Below are some suggested chapters for a high school course. (See the annotated table of contents for additional descriptions of the experiments.)

Part I: Competitive Markets

• Experiment 1: Supply and Demand

  This experiment introduces the basics of markets to your students, and teaches them the basics of supply and demand (some simple graphing and graph reading skills are required). You need to do this experiment first, as many of the later experiments use a similar market set-up and require knowledge of the underlying material presented here.

• Experiment 2: Shifting Supply and Demand

  This material elaborates on the ideas presented in the first experiment, and thus you may also want to include this experiment.

Part II: Market Intervention and Public Policy

• Experiment 3: Sales Taxes

  All about sales taxes in markets...perhaps not of great interest to high school students.

• Experiment 4: Prohibition

  Students seem to really enjoy this experiment, perhaps because of the topic (a market for drugs with prohibited sales). It is a nice application of some basic economic principles, with some interesting policy insights.

• Experiment 5: Minimum Wages

  In addition to learning about the effects of market controls like price ceilings and floors, students learn to define and measure voluntary and involuntary unemployment. Some high school students may find discussions of minimum wage jobs of interest.

Part III: Imperfect Markets

• Experiment 6: Externalities

  This experiment is more extensive than some, but its topic is of inherent interest to most high school students (environmental policy and pollution).

• Experiment 7: Monopolies and Cartels

  Students learn about monopoly pricing, price discrimination, and how cartels can break down, and thus this may be a fine experiment for a high school class.

Part IV: Firms and Technology

• Experiment 8: Entry and Exit

  This experiment has a two-stage game in which there is an "entry stage" and "market stage," and allows an exploration of the dynamics of industry, along with some basics about firm behavior.

• Experiment 9: Network Externalities

  While the formal theory surrounding some of this experiment may be difficult for high school students, the basic experiment is very accessible. Most students should be able to grasp the theory at an intuitive level. Thus, you might want to run the experiment and just discuss the underlying principles without requiring the students to do the homework.

• Experiment 10: Measuring Productivity

  This experiment is a good one for high school students as it involves production of paper airplanes, while simultaneously teaching some basic issues of production.

• Experiment 11: Comparative Advantage

  This experiment explores issues surrounding international trade. It should be very accessible to high school students interested in this area.

Part IV: Information, Auctions, and Bargaining

• Experiment 12: Adverse Selection

  This experiment concerns the impact of imperfect information on the functioning of economic markets. The topic is fun---a used car market---but some of the material may be too challenging for the typical high school student.

• Experiment 13: Auctions

  Auctions are a lot of fun for students, and thus this should work well in a high school class.

• Experiment 14: Bargaining

  This experiment looks at two-person bargaining and should be accessible to high school students. Some of the theory behind this may be intuitively difficult for high school students.

Appendix: Further Economic Principles

More advance students may want to read parts of the appendix.