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An interesting subject for a ONE day class for high schoolers to get them excited about economics?

Hi all,

I'm currently teaching English in Europe for the year, but because I studied economics in college, the social studies teacher here wants me to give an economics class. I'm looking for a subject that will be easy enough for them to grasp while being entertaining and engaging. Any ideas? 

Thinking about a game where the students get to see some lessons in competition, or perhaps some easy game theory stuff. What do you think?
gpt
Oftentimes game theory is the way to go in these instances.  A repeated game prisoners dilemma is a great way to get some interaction going:

Divide the class up into groups, and tell them the rules of the game. Make them play about ten interations allowing for in-group discussion, tell them to write down the sequence of tactics their group used, and either play against the same group ten times or cycle so that they play a different group every round (in which case every group's strategy against another group has to be publicly announced per round) . Then get someone from every group to write down their Total Points on the board and their chosen strategy sesuence. Discuss optimal strategies and let them guess and think about it. Introduce Nash equilibria etc.

You could also discuss auctions by running first price auction experiments:

Let people write down their name and birthday on a piece of paper and set their maximum valuation for the auction as €(MM+DD)  ( months and days from their birthday). The money they stand to gain for any auction is then equal to their max valuation minus their bid, if they win. So let them write down a bid for an auction with 1 random classmate, and one for an auction with 2 random classmates.  Put the pieces of paper in a bowl and start making the pairs, followed by triplets. Determine who won the most money in the end.

You could then talk about the dangers of overbidding and underbidding. Let them suggest alternative rules to fix these problems. Then you could Bring in the concept of vickrey auctions/second price auctions or English auctions.