Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/games/econol13.zip/ECONOL.DOC

Text File | 1993-02-21 | 9KB | 148 lines

                            OVERVIEW OF ECONOLAND
                     copyright, 1991, Michael C. Lovell,
                        63 Carriage Drive, Durham, CT.

        Your travel agent can't sell you tickets to Econoland, but your
computer will take you there.  Start this program and you
will be time-warped to the year 2001 in order to serve on
the economic policy team of the newly elected President of ECONOLAND.
Your task is to set the level of government spending, the tax rate and
monetary policy so as to best contribute to full employment, price
stability and economic growth.  After completing four Training Missions
you will be asked to cope with a variety of Challenging Assignments,
including OPEC price hikes, War, demobilization, technological unemployment,
and the productivity slowdown.

       Are you an Amateur Armchair Economist?  Do you think the policy
makers in Washington who shape the future of the American economy know
what they are doing?  It is easy to sit in front of your TV and complain about
what goes wrong in our nation's capital, but up till now you have had no
means of proving that you could do better.
       Are you a WantToBEE?  Have you always wanted the opportunity to take
charge in Washington and make the system work?  The ECONOLAND-2001
program provides you with a unique opportunity to demonstrate just how
skillfully you can manipulate the policy levers in order to achieve full employ-
ment without inflation.  You will be whisked by your computer on a magic
carpet to ECONOLAND, a mythical republic located in the PC Galaxy, halfway
between the artificial models of the textbook and the real world.  It is year
2001, and the newly elected President can't wait to throw the rascals out of
Washington and take charge on Inauguration Day.  And thanks to your key
contribution to the election campaign, you have been offered the choice of
serving as a key member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers or
as Chair of the Federal Reserve System.  You and your colleagues will have
complete authority to manipulate tax rates, government spending, the money
supply, and/or interest rates --- whatever is required to restore profits for
Wall Street and jobs in Detroit.

       What is your EPQ?  You will find that ECONOLAND is not the paradise of
Shangri-La.  Its no Utopia.  And year 2001 is not George Orwell's 1984.
ECONOLAND is susceptible to unacceptably high rates of unemployment.  And
inappropriate policies can precipitate a dangerous inflationary spiral.  Your
success in managing the economy will be appraised in terms of what happens
to the unemployment rate and inflation as summarized by the Economic Discom-
fort Index.  Can you do better than the administration in Washington?  Can
you do better than your friends and neighbors?  On the basis of how well you
manage the economy, the ECONOLAND-2001 program will calculate your EPQ ---
Economic Policy Quotient.

Warning:  Any resemblance between ECONOLAND and the Real World may be no
more than coincidental.  The ECONOLAND-2001 program is definitely not a fore-
casting device --- if you want forecasts, look into a crystal ball, consult
your favorite astrologer, or hire the consulting services of Data Resources
Incorporated (DRI) or Wharton Econometrics.

Structure: In ECONOLAND, as in Washington, economic policy makers do not
know the exact structure of the economy.  Conceivably, much might be learned
by subjecting the historical data generated by simulation runs to econometric
analysis using any of the multitude of statistical program packages available
for that purpose.  But as a practical matter, it may be best to try and learn
about Econoland's structure through trial and error simulation experiments
take charge and see what happens.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The ECONOLAND-2001 simulation program provides an economics laboratory in
which you can learn about macroeconomic policy through trial and error
experimentation.  Macroeconomics is the branch of economics that examines how
fiscal policy (changes in government spending and tax rates) and monetary
policy (changes in the Fed's discount rate and the money supply) influence for
good or ill the level of unemployment, the pace of inflation, productivity
growth and the business cycle.

When asked what they have gained from this simulation package, users often
report that they have learned:
     How changes in fiscal policy --- taxes and spending levels -- influence
          the pace of economic activity in the short run.
     How an independent Federal Reserve System may influence inflation and
          unemployment by manipulating the level of interest rates and the
          rate of money supply growth.
     How the president's economic advisers may be frustrated when they find
          that their plans for simulating the economy are opposed by Con-
          gress or undermined by a conservative Chairman of the Federal
          Reserve Board who is hypersensitive to the dangers of inflation.
     Why in the present limited state of current knowledge efforts at fine-
          tuning the pace of economic activity, however well intentioned,
          may do more harm than good.
     How measures designed to stimulate the economy in the short run can
          crowd out private investment spending, thereby lowering the
          capital stock available in future years and reducing the long run
          potential output of the economy.

This program was created for students enrolled in college level courses in
Macroeconomics.  Anyone who has taken such a course should be prepared to
face up to the exciting challenges offered by Econoland-2001.  But if you
have never studied macroeconomics, you will find that the program's four
Training Missions provide excellent on-the-job training.

A SHORT GUIDED TOUR:

1.     Users of ECONOLAND are advised to read at least the first five pages of
the manual before starting the program.  These pages provide background
information about the unfortunate economic history of the mythical republic of
ECONOLAND and explain how to start up the program on your computer.  The
manual provides advice from leading economic experts about the strategies that
should be followed in order to restore economic health to ECONOLAND as it
moves into the 21st century.  The manual also explains how to appoint the
members of the President's Council of Economic Advisers and the Chair of the
Federal Reserve Board.  It demonstrates how to enter policy decisions into
the computer.

2.     After starting the program the user will probably want to select the
Political Unconstrained Option and then move on to the first training mission.
Before proceeding it may be useful to consider the experience of two student
teams, the  "Candy Keynes" versus the "Fiscal Tightwads," which is reported
in Chapter 3 of the Manual.  For the first simulation only the level of gov-
ernment spending can be controlled.  Take a trial simulation run and see what
happens.

3.     Once the first trail simulation is completed the output menu is dis-
played.   Touch P to see a graph showing what happened to the unemployment
rate and inflation as a result of your decisions.  For more detailed infor-
mation, tap Q to get a table reviewing your performance.  Tap G for a
glossary of the technical economic terms used on the table.

4.     Return to the Main Menu by tapping R.  At this point you may want to
consider certain setup options.  Tapping S gets you to the Setup Menu.  You
could enter new teams, establish another league, or use the edit options to
appoint yourself and your friends to the economic policy team.  Other options
allow you to set your printer, change the colors used on the monitor, and
turn off sirens and other sound.

5.     Once you have completed the first training mission, you can tap M to
move on through a sequence of training missions in order to learn about the
effects of changing tax rates and interest rates on the performance of the
economy.

6.     After you have competed a few training missions you may want to check
out your EPQ (Economic Policy Quotient).  Select Table 4 on the Output menu
and review the evaluation of your performance.

7.     Once you feel comfortable with the program and the training missions,
tap A on the Main Menu to move on to the advanced assignments in order to
see how OPEC, WAR, demobilization and a variety of other shocks would affect
economic developments in Econoland.

8.     Compete with your friends.  Table 5 provides a convenient summary
ranking the performance of competing teams in terms of both the Economic
Discomfort Index and the Economic Policy Score.