A role-play to explain cartel behavior: Discussing the oligopolistic market

Manuel Correa, Fernando García-Quero and Marta Ortega-Ortega

International Review of Economics Education, 2016, vol. 22, issue C, 8-15

Abstract: The objective of this article is to provide an innovative and dynamic technique to teach strategic behavior in one of the most characteristic traits of the oligopolistic market: the cartel, in particular the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel. We propose a classroom game consisting of a role playing game with 12–48 students who act as if they were a member country of OPEC. The students have to decide petroleum production in barrels to achieve the maximum benefit, taking into account price changes depending on their behavior. The classroom game (40–45min to run) can be extended to include different treatments for use in basic economics, intermediate or advanced microeconomics or other courses that examine strategic behavior and the importance of institutions in economic performance.

Keywords: Classroom experiment; Cartel; Teaching; Institutions; Role-play (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A22 D43 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477388015302395
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ireced:v:22:y:2016:i:c:p:8-15

DOI: 10.1016/j.iree.2016.03.001

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics Education is currently edited by Guest, Ross

More articles in International Review of Economics Education from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().