Comparative Advantage

The Desert Island and Paper Game

Learn Liberty has a great game to teach comparative advantage, which is one of the areas my students, both AP and CP, struggle mightily. When starting, we go over why nations trade, then talk about comparative advantage. We watch the AC/DC economics video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpTBjRf8lGs) about how to find comparative advantage. In my AP class, I have them play the desert island game (http://desertisland.learnliberty.org/) both basic and advanced game. Then, they take a screenshot at the end to show how both benefited. In my CP class, we play the basic game together and I walk them through it.

Afterward, we play the game that can be found here: https://docs.google.com/a/myvalor.com/document/d/11VtwjbHKcHx9TWGkxqBFgSePafZFJ-JXp8zyinOtaOE/edit?usp=sharing you will need 2 different colors of paper, we use yellow and blue and cut it into 1/4ths. You will need a high volume of paper depending on class size. It is fun and you can run with it, for example, if you want to explore terms of trade.