The latest edition of the online journal Journal of Industrial Organization Education has an article about an Excel simulation of the effects of international trade and various trade policies on a domestic monopoly producer (just fill in your details on the site to get instant ‘guest’ access to the article). It’s quite a bit more complicated than my simple demand and supply example but it uses the same basic techniques. It should be a useful example to illustrate how a more complex economic model can be simulated numerically and presented graphically.

I notice that one of the authors of that article, John Gilbert (who also did his PhD at Auckland like me) has created some other interactive Excel models. One of them, “A trade war/simulation in Excel” looks quite sophisticated and simulates reaction functions in a game theoretic model.

Please send me any links to similar models that you find.