Lessons to be learned from using Gertner’s game of Cournot oligopoly in the classroom

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, economics departments at Australian universities have become increasingly concerned with falling undergraduate enrolments. This follows concerns by students regarding the relevance of economics courses both in content and delivery to their future occupations and incomes. It is also a result of competition from the more generic business and marketing courses that have been introduced in many commerce faculties. Together with the broader goal of universities to produce employable, well-rounded graduates, the attrition of economics undergraduates has steered attention within undergraduate economics classes to experimenting with a wide range of teaching tools. One such tool introduced by the authors in a second-year competition and business strategies unit in 2004 – a tutorial game on Cournot interdependence – is described in this paper