Behavioural Economics
Welcome to Behavioural Economics, a slightly-different, alternative RP that uses an interesting approach to role-playing in the Portal to the Multiverse. Behavioural Economics is a somewhat world-building, character-building, text-intensive roleplay, where players will take on certain key roles in the economy of a few different countries. Some players will be big businesses, some small businesses, some exporters, importers, heads of states, opposition politicians, central bank executives, economists, investors, stock brokers, consumers, ministers of finance, and more. Each action undertaken by one group, or even by a single player, will hugely undermine the economic cycle of the game, and will force players to competitively re-evaluate their positions as their characters. For instance, a country that produces many consumer goods for another country might impose an embargo for whatever reason, and the suffering country’s consumers will be poorer, and the whole of the economy would shrink as a result. Players in that country would have to mitigate these effects through whatever means they can.
An investor will not be directly affected by a grain import ban, for instance, but resource-consuming businesses and industries will, which will have a direct effect on the investor. To avoid awkward situations where one economic agent suddenly loses all of his money in a matter that has no direct relevance to him, we will operate with the expanded economic circular flow chart, shown here:
As you can see from Fig. 12.5, some economic agents have direct effects on other economic agents, and all economic agents have indirect effects on every other economic agent. The government raising personal income tax will result in less household income as a direct effect, but then less consumption in the product market, which means less income for businesses as indirect effects, even if businesses were not directly harmed at all by the government raising household taxes.
By the way, banks seem to be out of the flow chart here. If you can spot the arrow going down from households called “savings” and the inflow to businesses called “investments”, these two things are connected by a non displayed economic agent called commercial banks, who often have investment banks alongside them. This is the diagram for the banking sector, which includes the central bank:
What will be more interesting about Behavioural Economics is that we will not focus on one single economy, but three or four different macroeconomies. There will be four countries, four central banks, four governments, four currencies, four budgets, and many other, smaller agents to go with them in their respective countries. This will add a whole other factor of international trade and international diplomacy on top of the national economy, complicating decisions and tasks.
There is no mission objective, as the RP is largely live-and-let-live. Your only help is supply and demand, and price signals will not be mathematically calculated, but you, as the supplier agent, will have to set a price signal in accordance with what you see to be demand. If you notice that, as a business, consumers have less income and thus less demand, you will have to lower your price in order to maximise profits. If you put your price too low, you will lose money. If you put your price too high, no one will buy what you produce. It is always important to keep an eye on the whole economy as your economic agent to maximise benefits. As governments, you will have to choose which fiscal policy to employ during a recession; as a central bank, you will have to choose between different monetary policies; as a business man, you will have to set prices and choose your imports wisely; as an investor, you will have to make sure your investments do not go to waste.
There is no easy way to ride the harsh waves of the economic cycle that will always find its way into your economy. Many agents will go bust, but many more will shine in the competitive world of international finance.
Playable Characters (per country):
1. Ruling party in government and cabinet members.
2. Opposition party in government and shadow cabinet members.
3. Central bank and board members.
4. Commercial banks.
5. Investment banks.
6. Businesses.
7. Investors.
8. Traders.
9. Lower-income households.
10. Middle-income households.
11. Higher-income households.
12. Reporters.
Some of these economic agents play very minor roles, and I doubt that this RP will be popular enough to house four times this number of people needed, so I will allow up to four characters per person.
Well, this is still an interest thread, so I won’t continue any further. If you’re interested in playing Behavioural Economics or if you have any questions, feel free to ask here!