incentives, experimental-economicsI am trying to get a deeper understanding of economic incentives. Therefore, I would like to know if there are any games (similar to Monopoly) or other entertaining activities you can recommend that requires one to experiment with various economical incentives? I am especially interested in setting incentives for others and seeing if they end up being counter-productive. To experiment with this in a company is just way too expensive.
If you are looking for games that are both entertaining and provoke one to try understanding other people's motivation in the game, I would recommend the following:
Mall of Horror - a game focuses on cooperating with other players to preserve characters owned by you, but at the same time, trying to make your opponents make wrong decisions so they would loose theirs. Game is very easy to get into and doesn't take very long.
Arkham Horror - a game where if the players don't cooperate, they have very little chance of winning, but there are so many ways the players can cooperate, that it is hard to agree on the course of action to take. You have to work out a plan of action, but it is never clear until the very end if it will work or not, so people might prefer to not cooperate and work on their own plan. This is especially true with some of the expansion sets, that add more layers of incentives that quite often go against one another. It takes a bit to set up, understand and play, but can be a very rewarding game that will always provide a different challange.
Battlestar Galactica - a game of trust, betrayal and sacrificing self for the group (or vice versa). Every turn players have to decide whether they want to carry out actions that have direct, immediate returns, or save their resources to counter a possible future crisis. The main problem of the game is that some players are traitors and work against the other players, but at the same time they want to remain hidden and cause disputes between non-traitors. In order to win players have to figure out the motives other people have and whether they are doing what they are doing for the benefit of everyone, or not. Game takes a bit to understand, but the play is very rewarding (albeit quite often very heated) and is very re-playable.
Cutthroat Caverns - a game where "without teamwork you will not survive, without betrayal, you will not win". The players are cooperating to take down foes stronger than they are, but only the person to land the final blow will score any points. So you will have situations where first the players will be cooperating, only to start hindering one another not to let the other person get the reward. Similarly, other player can help you (by healing your character), but they will earn points for doing that, so you have to figure out what is more beneficial for you. You also have the economical choice of letting another player's character die so they won't win, but at the same time making the game harder for yourself. The game is easy to pick up and play, and is more light hearted than the other mentioned games.
Other notable mentions are A Game of Thrones and Shadow over Camelot, but most of what they offer have already been covered by the other mentioned games.
The description fits perfectly to Junta.
The president distributes economic aid to the other players. He can decide whom to give which amounts of help and how much to keep for himself. The other players in return decide to start a rebellion against the president or to support him. If they rebell, they will not get their share of this turn’s development aid, irrespective of whether the revolution is successful or not.
Something recent I've found that includes a surprising economics example is the game Frozen Synapse which includes a multiplayer mode that allows players to bid for the better starting territory.
If you have a handful of people, a short funny economics experiment is the auction of a dollar(of course, given your monetary situation, you could auction a higher currency). Basically, you have an auction in which everyone stands up initially. Once the auction starts, you state the starting bid (say 10 cents) and anyone who wants to continue vying for the dollar continues to stand, everyone else sits. And you keep increasing the bid every few seconds until you are left with only one person standing. The catch is this: the winner pays his/her final bid, and the second place finisher pays his/her final bid as well. Often, individuals will go well over the value of a dollar to win a bid and the auctioneer tends to turn a profit. You can increase these profits by requiring all players pay their final amount (thus those who sit down immediately are the only ones who pay zero). This demonstrates a few concepts: first, that the best strategy is to not play (the NE of the game, in fact) and also that of sunk costs. Although one only gains a dollar from winning, winning is always more beneficial than coming in second so one should ignore the fact that the bid is increasing because that money is already gone.
Swoopo is a real life example of this game in action.
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