I haven't posted here for a long time, but continuing readers will
recognise me as one of the authors of Virtual Economy, our big Web-based
system for teaching economics. Try it if you haven't already, at
http://www.bized.ac.uk/virtual/economy/ .
What VE does is to allow the student to change taxes and other policy
variables: it then runs a version of the Treasury model, and sends back a
ten-year macro forecast of the effects of the student's changes. (There is
also Graham Stark's micro model, which calculates how the changes would
affect a sample of UK families.)
The point of this mail is to seek collaborators and funding for an
extension - novel, possibly unique - to VE. The idea is to make the
program generate artificial newspaper stories illustrating the _social_
consequences that would accompany VE's forecasts.
My intention in generating these stories is twofold: to inform and to
motivate the student. The stories should inform about - amongst other
things - the macro costs of the economic circumstances (e.g. effect of
unemployment on output, public spending; the meaning of the numbers in the
forecasts (e.g. how significant is the difference between 2% and 2.5% GDP
growth, or 5% and 10% unemployment); the social effects on people (loss of
skills, loss of motivation etc.); and not least, the emotional harm that
adverse circumstances can cause (described, e.g. in books such as Mark
Steel's Reasons to be Cheerful, and Polly Toynbee's Hard Work).
And they should motivate because they will be fun to read, interesting,
and will thereby encourage the student to keep running VE and exploring
its output.
In some ways, the stories would resemble the little newspaper clippings
found in many introductory textbooks, but they would be much more dynamic.
This isn't just talk: I've done a lot in my spare time, and got a
prototype implementation up using techniques from Artificial Intelligence
and computer gaming, which I'm writing up for Guy Judge at CHEER.
What I'm looking for now is funding with which to continue the research,
and collaborators to provide input about the economics and educational
needs. I'd like to get a working version up by January 2004: with luck, we
could then mount it on the BBC's Website with the version of VE we do for
them for the Budget, which would provide really excellent publicity for
all involved.
It should also be possible to develop the techniques for use with other
economic simulations, such as the models on biz/ed's Virtual Learning
Arcade.
Anyone interested in joining in, or able to give advice on where to go for
funding, do please contact me.
Jocelyn Paine
http://www.ifs.org.uk/~popx/
+44 (0)7768 534 091
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