Business Simulation Games - Real-world Applications

Real-world Applications

Because economic simulations simulate real-world systems, they can often be used for economics education. Some benefits of simulations are that they permit students to experience and test themselves in situations before encountering them in real life, that they permit students to experiment and test hypotheses, and that subjects seem more "real" to them than when taught passively from the blackboard. They are also used extensively in the professional world to train workers in the financial industries and management, and to study economic models (an association of professionals, ABSEL, exists for the sole purpose of promoting their use), with some simulations having in excess of 10,000 variables. Economic simulations have even been used in experiments, such as those done by Donald Broadbent on learning and cognition that revealed how people often have an aptitude for mastering systems without necessarily comprehending the underlying principles. Other games are used to study the behavior of consumers.