Introductory economics · free to use

Classroom

A free, open classroom for introductory economics, made for learners, teachers and tutors anywhere, and for anyone rethinking how the subject is taught. Nothing here asks you to take a result on trust. Move the curve, flip the sign, try to break the conclusion, and see for yourself why it holds and where it stops holding. Everything runs in the browser, with nothing to install, no account and no grades.

▶ Start with the Market Forces Lab Open the Macro Vitals Lab Enter Market Maker · L1 Enter the Signal Room · L2 How to use these in a course

Microeconomics

Open in a browser · nothing to install · no account · no data leaves the machine

Live Managerial Economics Intro microeconomics Tutorial round

Market Forces Lab

Eight rooms covering the first arc of any introductory microeconomics course: demand and supply, what shifts a curve versus what merely moves along one, equilibrium and how it repairs itself, elasticity and its determinants, the elasticity–revenue relationship, consumer and producer surplus, and deadweight loss. Students play; the diagrams respond; every claim in the lecture becomes something they can falsify in about four seconds.

Built against Mankiw's Principles of Microeconomics (Ch. 4–7) and Baye & Prince's Managerial Economics and Business Strategy (Ch. 2–3) · basic calculus only · ungraded, nothing is submitted or collected

01Shift or Slide?Eighteen scenarios. Does a curve move, or do we travel along one that didn't? Timed, scored, keyboard-playable.
02Rooftop Solar SandboxNine switches, one per non-price determinant. Post your own price and watch the shortage or glut appear.
03Elasticity DuelTwo goods, both prices up 20%. Call the more elastic one, then name which determinant explains it.
04The Pricing RoomRun a price test on a real revenue curve. Midpoint method computed live; gained and lost revenue shaded.
05Two Ways to Shrink a MarketSqueeze supply or squeeze demand. With inelastic demand only one of them works — find where the verdict flips.
06The Refurbished Laptop FloorFour named buyers, four named sellers. Per-person surplus, marginal trader highlighted.
07The Quantity DialDial output by hand and watch value that never got created. Deadweight loss in both directions.
08Arguments Worth HavingTwelve open questions with no answer key. Surge caps, export bans, zero-marginal-cost supply curves.
▶ Open the lab

Level 1 · The Challenge

Follows the Lab tutorial round · timed · scored · still ungraded

Live Level 1 Game mode 87 questions Replayable

Market Maker

Do the Lab tutorial round first — this level assumes it. Twelve questions drawn from a rotating pool, in three escalating tiers, with a clock on every one and a streak multiplier that rewards not breaking. Answer fast and you keep more of the points; get one wrong and the multiplier resets to zero, but the run never ends early — everybody finishes all twelve. It reaches past the lab into price ceilings and floors, tax incidence, and opportunity and sunk cost.

TIER 1Recognise100 base points. Does the curve shift or do we move along it? Normal or inferior? Elastic or not?
TIER 2Apply200 base points. Compute a midpoint elasticity, find an equilibrium, size a shortage, click the right region on a diagram.
TIER 3Judge350 base points. Traps, ambiguous two-shift cases, and the questions where the confident answer is the wrong one.
BONUSSpeed & streakUp to +50% for answering quickly. Three in a row ×1.2, five ×1.5, eight ×2.
AFTERConcept diagnosticsAccuracy tracked across eleven concepts, so you can see which idea is quietly costing you points.
ALWAYSNo marksCarries no weight, affects nothing on your transcript. It exists because replaying beats rereading.

Nothing is collected. You pick a display name and play. Scores, streaks and progress live only in your own browser, and score submission is switched off: the Submit button is greyed out, and at the end of a run Show my summary lays out your totals, how the score was built and every question with its explanation, on your own screen and nowhere else. No one else sees your score.

▶ Enter the floor Warm up in the Lab first

Level 2 · The Signal Room

Cases, not questions · conviction staked before every answer · still ungraded

Live Level 2 Case based 11 briefs No sign-in

Signal Room

Level 1 asks whether a student knows the idea. This one asks whether they can use it on something messy. Each round is a brief drawn from what is actually happening now — collapsing token prices, an export control, a reunion tour that sold out in eleven minutes, a grid under strain from new data centres — followed by three linked steps, where step two assumes step one landed. Before each answer the student stakes how sure they are. That turns out to be the hardest part, and the most revealing.

Same conceptual ground as the Lab, approached from the applied side · no arithmetic beyond a calculator · nothing is collected, nothing is submitted, no sign-in

FORMThree linked stepsA brief, then three questions that build on each other. Getting the second right depends on having understood the first.
STAKEConviction, declaredLow ×0.6, Medium ×1.0, High ×1.8. High nearly doubles the points and costs you when it is wrong.
NEWSign the verdictA 3×3 grid: commit to what happens to price and quantity at once. Ambiguous is one of the options, and often the right one.
NEWAudit the argumentFour plausible steps of somebody's reasoning. Click the one where it first breaks. Usually it is not the step that sounds wrong.
BONUSClean sweepAll three steps of a brief correct earns +250. Rewards sustained reasoning rather than a lucky streak.
AFTERCalibration readoutHow often they were right at each conviction level. Knowing which of your answers to trust is a separate skill, and this measures it.

No speed bonus, and that is deliberate. Level 1 rewards answering fast. Here the clock is only an outer limit and rushing earns nothing, because the skill being practised is the one that falls apart under hurry: deciding whether a case is actually determinate before announcing that it is. Several briefs cannot be signed from the information given, and saying so is the correct answer rather than a hedge.

▶ Open the Signal Room Play Level 1 first

Macroeconomics

Open in a browser · nothing to install · no account · no data leaves the machine

Live Macroeconomics and Business Environment Intro macroeconomics Nine rooms

Macro Vitals Lab

The introductory macro module: how a country's output is measured, why that measurement grows, and how the saving of one person becomes the investment of another. Students sort transactions into C, I, G and NX and find the half that do nothing to GDP; drive prices and quantities apart until nominal and real GDP tell opposite stories; run the production function into diminishing returns; and shift the loanable-funds curves until they can say, without hesitating, which curve a budget deficit moves.

Built against Mankiw's Principles of Macroeconomics (Ch. 10, 12, 13) · arithmetic only, no calculus · ungraded, nothing is submitted or collected

01Where Does It Land?Sixteen transactions sorted into C, I, G, NX — or into nothing at all. Imports, transfers, old flats, unsold stock.
02Nominal, Real, DeflatorA two-good economy with the price and quantity dials separated. Move the base year and watch what refuses to change.
03What the Number MissesSeven changes that make the country no better off and the headline figure climb anyway. With the defence stated fairly.
04The Productivity FunctionY/L = A·F(1, K/L, H/L, N/L) with four dials. The curve flattens under your hand.
05Catch-UpTwo countries, same saving rate, different starting capital. Then one switch that stops convergence for good.
06The Policy BenchEleven growth policies: name the determinant each moves, then say whether it buys a level or a rate.
07Where Saving Comes FromPrivate, public, national. Cut taxes, choose how much households save, and watch investment decide.
08The Market for Loanable FundsSaving incentive, investment credit, budget deficit. Three policies, two curves, and crowding out measured.
09Arguments Worth HavingTwelve open questions with no answer key. Imputed rents, the convergence that did not happen, what the borrowing bought.
▶ Open the lab

How to use these in a course

Three patterns that work · pick one, they are not cumulative

Everything runs client-side in the browser. There is no backend and no login anywhere here. None of the labs or games collects anything: no analytics, no student data of any kind, and progress is remembered only in that browser's own storage. Market Maker's score submission is switched off, so its Submit button is greyed out and each run's summary stays on the player's own screen. Details on the privacy page.

Adopting these elsewhere. Instructors at any institution are welcome to link to these directly, or to take the source and retarget it. The pages are plain HTML with no build step: the question bank lives in its own file, so the subject matter can be swapped without touching the game engine, and a single config file sets the run length, timers, points, and whether and where submissions go. Nothing in them is specific to one institution.