Proceedings of the 7th World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Open for Business: Teaching Elements of Command Economics Through a Simulated Classroom Store
Dr. Jeffrey M. Byford, Dr. Alisha Milam
ABSTRACT:
This activity is designed to be taught in a government, economics, or history course. This simulation focuses on a command economy’s essential functions and principles commonly found throughout Eastern Europe from 1949-1989. Students, acting as consumers, must purchase all the goods on their grocery lists. As students wait in line to purchase common everyday materials, students are asked to confront four fundamental questions: 1) what are the potential strengths and weaknesses of a government-controlled and regulated structure of the distribution and sale of consumer goods, 2) what characteristics (if any) are similar to a free-market economy? 3) how might one purchase limited or scarce commodities while living in a communist society?; and 4) when doing individual liberties and freedoms outweigh a government’s power to control production and sell goods? Such a simulation activity lends itself to teaching about the ideological and economic differences between command and free-market systems.
keywords: Black market; Command economics; communism; free market; simulation