ESL Software - Mirror
Economic Science Laboratory
Software Applications - March 3, 1996
Local Area Network Applications
Instruction in Economics and Finance
Although the majority of our applications were developed for research, most can be used in the classroom to demonstrate various Economic and Finance principles. In an attempt to incorporate the research methodology into the classroom,
three programs have been written specifically for use in teaching. These Include:
These files are available for anonymous ftp from fido.econlab.arizona.edu
in the directory /pub/export/softlib.
Research Applications
The following research programs are currently available and are being used now for many classroom topics.
"MICRO Monop" allows a student to assume the role of seller with simulated demand. It is a price search exercise when demand is unknown to the seller requiring the user to develop a search strategy that minimizes sampling trials;
or as an exercise in discrete optimization when demand is known, and the principles of marginal analysis are to be applied.
Click here to download this software.
Students divide token endowments between a private investment with an individual return and a group investment whose return is a common property, or public good. The total return from the group investment is shared equally by all individuals.
The results demonstrate the strong incentive to free ride on the contributions of others when property is shared in common. But the strong form of the free riding hypothesis -- zero contributions to the public good -- is not observed.
This program also allows for a Property Rights Mechanism. This is accomplished by rewriting the sharing rule for investment in the Group Exchange.
Instead of each individual receiving a per capita share of the total return, independently of his or her contribution, as when rights are held in common, the return will be shared in proportion to each individual's contribution. This "property
right" treatment makes the Group Exchange a private good, and can be used to demonstrate by experiment the crucial importance of property rights to proper incentives in a market.
Click here to download this software.
(Stand alone DOS application; requires VGA graphics and HP Laser)
This program was written to assist in conducting a hand-run uniform
price "call" market in the classroom. This application is useful in discussions of
supply & demand, and institutional design. We have seen from laboratory experiments
that the Uniform Price Double Auction (UPDA) mechanism performs equally as well with
respect to efficiency and equilibrium convergence properties as the continuous double auction.
Click here to download this software.
This market institution is the most traditional, used around the world (NYSE,CBOT,London,Paris,etc.) to trade securities, commodities, currencies and derivative instruments. Two environments
can be created: induced supply and demand, by assigning buyers resale values, and sellers costs, or an asset market with traders relying on a known yield (dividend) distribution for fundamental values.
This program allows up to 40 participants trading either single or multiple units of a good and allows multiple parameterization options (treatment variables) to explore various facets of this
institution, such as "open book" trading rules, price floors and ceilings, and demand or supply shocks.
Click here to download version 1.31 of this software.
Click here to download the NEW version 1.4 of this software.
This is a continuous or discrete time program which allows up to 8 students to compete as firms in a quantity setting, simulated demand oligopoly environment. Up to 11 parallel independent
oligopolies with from 2 to 8 firms that can be run simultaneously. Since the two firm case can be analyzed graphically, it is accessible to undergraduate courses with or without a mathematics requirement.
Click here to download this software.
This application is a generic normal game allowing the inititalization of any nxn matrix game limited
to the PC screen size. This program has been written with research in mind, with lots of parameterization options.
Click here to download this software.