The International Trade Game · Digital Edition
turns the celebrated International Trade Game into a complete digital simulation. Nations with unequal resources manufacture goods, strike deals, ride price shocks and discover comparative advantage for themselves, It requires no scissors, paper or other materials, and it includes an instructor console, scenario packs and a structured debrief.
Runs in any browser · No installs, no student accounts · Works offline once loaded · 2 to 8 teams · Have an access code?
Why instructors choose it
Built on John Sloman's established classroom design, with join codes, instructor controls, live dashboards and a prepared debrief.
From advanced industrial Nordhaven to resource-rich Terravia, each country card mirrors a real-world archetype with its own capital stock, raw materials and productivity table, so factor endowments and Heckscher-Ohlin logic are baked into play.
Teams manufacture goods through a fast quality-control mini-game. Defective units waste materials, standards tighten during the game, and each country produces at a different speed, so opportunity cost becomes directly observable.
Posted prices move in response to scheduled supply and demand shocks, which are announced on a projected newswire. Export contracts pay a premium for planned production, and the World Bank supplies tools and loans at a high cost.
Trades are negotiated face to face and recorded in each nation's ledger. Cartels, alliances, broken agreements, tariffs and sanctions all provide material for the debrief.
A master timer with pause and extension, a price board, a newswire to read aloud, an auction toolkit, custom announcements, a leaderboard with podium reveal, and results that can be exported to a gradebook.
A three-stage debrief and a set of lessons covering absolute and comparative advantage, factor endowments, terms of trade and trade policy, with an interactive calculator.
How it works
Open on the big screen as Instructor, pick a scenario and game length, and read the class settings aloud.
Each team opens the same link on a laptop or phone, enters a team name and takes the nation you assign. Count down together and start.
Production, negotiation and price shocks proceed for the set period. Collect the final figures, reveal the podium, then run the three-stage debrief.
Scenario packs
A faithful digital adaptation: unequal endowments, an oversupply of triangles, rising demand for circles, an innovation summit and a closing rally. The most direct route to comparative advantage and the gains from trade.
A volatile commodity cycle: sharp rises, falls, a recovery and a late decline. It illustrates diversification, market timing and shifts in the terms of trade, and suits a second session.
The session opens in autarky, followed by a customs duty, an export subsidy, sanctions on a major economy and a closing trade accord. It examines institutions, protection and the role of the World Trade Organization.
Four ways to teach with it
The live classroom game is the centrepiece. Around it sit three self-study tools students can open any time, all from this page. Watch the 60-second tour to see each in action.
The multiplayer classroom simulation. Teams take nations, produce goods, negotiate deals and ride market shocks across three scenario packs, run from the projected instructor console.
An interactive lab for absolute and comparative advantage. Allocate workers between two goods in two economies and watch opportunity cost, specialisation and the gains from trade emerge, built on the classic UK–Japan and Bel Canto examples.
Eight short, sourced lessons from mercantilism to modern trade theory, with a comparative advantage calculator and a full reference list in APA style.
Exam-style multiple choice drawn at random from a large bank, with worked explanations, topic focus and a grade band, ideal for revision or a quick formative check.
Pricing
Access codes unlock the full game. A licence may be purchased for a single class or for an entire department. The prices shown are indicative and can be amended in the configuration block.
About the creator
Lecturer in Economics · University of Dundee School of Business
is designed and operated by Dr Abubakar Hassan, Lecturer in Economics at the University of Dundee School of Business, where he teaches international trade, business strategy and quantitative methods, supervises doctoral researchers, and serves as a Senior Adviser of Studies. He holds a PhD in Energy Economics from the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy.
His work sits at the intersection of applied economics and pedagogy, with a particular interest in experiential learning: how simulation, negotiation and play make abstract theory tangible. distils years of running the International Trade Game with undergraduate and postgraduate cohorts, together with the published scholarship on trade, foreign direct investment and simulation-based teaching, into a platform any instructor can run in a single session.
Frequently asked questions
Everything an instructor or a student is likely to ask before a first session.
No. Teams open a single link in any modern browser, on a laptop, tablet or phone, and nothing is installed. The platform can also be added to a phone’s home screen as an app. It runs entirely in the browser and continues to work if the connection drops mid-session.
The instructor may assign nations directly, keeping the assignment concealed from students until the session opens, in the manner of the sealed envelopes used in the original classroom activity, or may allow teams to select their own nation. Both modes are available from the Instructor Console.
Two mechanisms are available. By default, all scheduled events run on a shared timetable, and every team begins together on the instructor’s countdown. Where live synchronisation is enabled, the instructor’s console additionally becomes the source of truth for the market, and every team device, including live trade proposals between teams, updates automatically and in real time.
Two to eight nations per session, with two to ten students collaborating per nation. Larger cohorts are accommodated by running parallel sessions in separate rooms, following the original classroom design, which has been used successfully with cohorts of up to 240 students under a single facilitator.
Scarcity and opportunity cost, absolute and comparative advantage, factor endowments, terms of trade and the gains from trade, market volatility, negotiation and market power, foreign direct investment, and the role of institutions and trade policy. A full account of the underlying theory, with academic citations, is provided in the Trade Theory section.
Each of the three games opens with a short guided walkthrough appropriate to the role of the person viewing it: students are shown how to play, and instructors are shown how to control the session and what to say to the class. These walkthroughs can be revisited at any time from within each game.
No. The platform is designed for students encountering these ideas for the first time. Rules are explained before play begins, and the underlying theory is introduced afterwards, during the structured debrief, so that the concepts are discovered through experience rather than assumed in advance.
A free demonstration licence is available with no time limit on trying the platform before purchase. Paid licences are priced per class per term, or as an annual departmental licence covering an unlimited number of classes and instructors. Current prices are shown above and may be revised by the licence holder.
Sessions may be set from ten minutes to two hours. A single class period of forty-five to sixty minutes, inclusive of debrief, is typical for a first use.
Yes. Session length, scenario, whether the session opens in autarky, and team assignment are configurable before each session. The licence holder may also edit prices, access codes, branding and colour themes directly within the platform’s configuration.
It is a digital adaptation of the classroom activity originated by the development charity ActionAid, subsequently adapted for economics teaching by John Sloman (2002) and published through the Economics Network. Full attribution, and an explicit account of what is and is not original to this implementation, is provided within the platform’s Origins and Credits page.
None that identifies an individual. No accounts are created and no personal details are requested. Where feedback surveys are used, responses are anonymous by design. Full detail is set out in the Privacy Notice linked from this page.
Yes. The interface adapts to phone, tablet and desktop screens, and the platform can be installed to a phone’s home screen for an app-like experience, including limited offline use.
Yes. Three colour modes are available, a daylight mode for general use, a darker mode suited to projection, and a high-contrast mode, selectable at any time from the sidebar.
Instructor and classroom codes are issued with your licence. Try DEMO for a free limited session.
Licensed session.
Last updated . These terms govern use of the Software. Please read them before purchasing or running a session.
"Software" means , the International Trade Simulator, including all screens, content, question banks, scenarios and documentation. "Licensor" means Dr Abubakar Hassan. "Licensee" means the individual or institution issued with a valid access code. "Participants" means students or other users taking part in a session run by the Licensee.
Subject to payment of the applicable fee, the Licensor grants the Licensee a non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Software for educational and training purposes for the duration of the purchased term. An Educator licence covers one class group; a Department licence covers the named department. Participants may use the Software within a licensed session without holding their own licence.
The Licensee shall not: (a) publish, resell, sublicense or otherwise distribute the Software or its access codes; (b) post access codes on any public website, repository or social platform; (c) remove, obscure or alter any attribution, branding or copyright notice; (d) reverse engineer or create derivative works for distribution; or (e) use the Software to build a competing product. Reasonable configuration of scenarios, pricing and content for the Licensee's own teaching is expressly permitted and encouraged.
All intellectual property in the Software, including its design, code, scenarios, lessons and assessment items, remains the property of the Licensor. This licence conveys no ownership. Third-party scholarship referenced within the Software is cited to its authors and remains theirs; the Software's summaries and adaptations are original works of the Licensor.
Fees are stated at the point of purchase and are exclusive of applicable taxes unless otherwise indicated. Licences do not auto-renew unless expressly agreed. Because access is granted immediately on delivery of a code, refunds are at the Licensor's discretion; a request made within 14 days of purchase, and before the code has been used in a live session, will normally be honoured in full.
The Licensee is responsible for the conduct of the sessions it runs, including supervision of Participants and compliance with its own institution's policies. The Software must not be used unlawfully.
The Software runs in the browser and, once loaded, continues to operate without an internet connection. The Licensor does not guarantee uninterrupted availability of any hosted copy or of any optional third-party synchronisation service. Support is provided by email on a reasonable-endeavours basis.
The Software is a teaching simulation. Its nations, prices and outcomes are illustrative and deliberately simplified, and model no real economy. Nothing within it constitutes financial, investment, legal or policy advice.
The Software is provided "as is" and "as available" without warranties of any kind, express or implied, to the fullest extent permitted by law. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the Licensor's total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with this licence shall not exceed the fees paid by the Licensee in the twelve months preceding the claim. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, and nothing affects the statutory rights of a consumer.
The Licensor may suspend or terminate a licence, without refund, on material breach of clauses 3 or 6. On termination the Licensee shall cease all use of the Software and destroy any copies in its possession.
The Licensor may update these terms for future purchases. The terms in force at the date of purchase continue to apply for that licence term.
These terms are governed by the law of Scotland, and the parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Scottish courts.
This is a carefully drafted template that reflects how the Software actually works. It is not legal advice. Have it reviewed by a qualified solicitor before commercial launch, particularly where institutional procurement or cross-border sales are involved.
Last updated . What the Software does, and does not, do with data.
is built to collect as little as possible. It creates no user accounts, asks for no email addresses and requires no student registration. There is no tracking, no advertising, no profiling, and no sale of data to anyone.
The data controller is Dr Abubakar Hassan (). Where an institution runs its own sessions, that institution is the controller for anything it chooses to record about its own students, such as marks transcribed from the results screen.
Game progress, your theme, your music preference and your access code are stored in your browser's local storage, on your own device. None of it is transmitted to the Licensor. Clearing your browser data deletes it permanently.
If your instructor enables live sync, devices exchange only what is needed to keep the market in step: the team name your group chooses, the nation it plays, its in-game score, and the market state published by the console. Names, email addresses, student numbers and other personal identifiers are never requested or transmitted. Teams should choose a team name that is not a real person's name.
Live sync is optional and off by default. Where an institution enables it, session data passes through a database that the institution configures and controls, and to which the Licensor has no access. Session data is transient: it exists for the duration of the game, and room records should be deleted afterwards, ideally with automatic expiry configured.
Where processing occurs it rests on legitimate interests in delivering a requested educational activity. Because the Licensor collects no personal data, there is no personal-data retention: game state is ephemeral and device-local.
The Software is intended for higher and further education and is not directed at children under 13. Institutions should apply their own safeguarding and data-protection policies.
The Software sets no cookies and contains no third-party analytics or advertising trackers. It loads a web font from Google Fonts, which may log the requesting IP address as part of delivering that font. Institutions with strict requirements can self-host the font or remove that request.
Under the UK GDPR you have rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. As the Licensor holds no personal data about Participants, such requests will normally be answered by confirming that no data is held. You may also complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
Any material change will be reflected in the "last updated" date above.
This notice is a carefully drafted template and accurately reflects the Software's behaviour, but it should be checked against your institution's data-protection policy, and by a qualified adviser, before commercial launch.
Home overview
The International Trade Game is an experiential learning activity in which nations with deliberately unequal resources produce, negotiate and sell in a live world market. It converts abstract theory into a practical exercise, so that specialisation, opportunity cost and comparative advantage are discovered by the participants rather than presented to them.
A live multiplayer game with eight nations, five goods and three scenarios.
A live auction for national priorities, illustrating scarcity, choice and opportunity cost.
An interactive exercise in absolute and comparative advantage.
Referenced lessons in trade theory, with an interactive calculator.
Randomised examination practice with worked explanations.
Strategy playbook
Share this code with your teams. Their market, clock and shocks will follow this console automatically.
Teams enter this on the join screen
Enter the room code shown on the projected console. Your clock, prices and news will then match the class exactly. Leave blank to play solo.
Team setup
Match the settings your instructor reads out, then select the country you were assigned. Endowments are deliberately unequal: that is the economics.
Team assignment
Your instructor has prepared a sealed national dossier for each team. Claim the team you belong to; its contents remain sealed until your instructor says to open them.
Read your country card below. When the instructor gives the signal, select Start. All teams begin together, so that market events affect every nation at the same time.
Buyers pay a premium above the market price for a specified set of goods. Each contract may be fulfilled once by your nation, directly from your warehouse.
Closed until the Technology Expo. Premium prices; a last resort rather than a strategy.
Select a common exchange to complete the form, then adjust the figures and confirm. Negotiate directly with the other nation; each team records its own side of the agreement.
Short lessons on the theory behind the game, plus a comparative advantage calculator.
Markets closed
Final GDP — report this to the instructor's World Market screen.
GDP over the session
Choose how nations reach the class. This choice can be made before teams join, and changed at any time before the markets open.
Teams currently pick their own nation from the country cards, exactly as before. Switch to sealed envelopes to assign nations yourself and keep them hidden until you choose to reveal them, matching the original paper-based game.
Pause and extend shift the schedule on this device only. Call "PAUSE" and have every team press pause together; same for +1 minute.
Scarce capital sells high. Announce an auction five minutes ahead, run a 60-second open outcry here, and let the winner buy from the World Bank or a rival at the hammer price.
Flash a headline on this screen, then read it aloud. Useful for warnings, praise or improvised shocks.
Fire an off-script shock on top of the scheduled events, for example to reward or punish class behaviour. Announce it aloud as you press.
One-page facilitator run sheet and a sheet of nation quick-cards to hand to teams.
Teams read their result screens aloud. Type team name and GDP, then reveal.
🔄 Teams in your room report their GDP automatically. Type only for teams playing offline.
Follow the classic structure: first feelings and comparisons, then realism, then theory. Ten to fifteen minutes turns the noise into learning.
Ask a high-income and a low-income team in turn. Frustration, power and dependency usually surface immediately.
Using your productivity table, what was your opportunity cost of one Circle in Triangles? Did you specialise where that cost was lowest?
Comparative advantage (Ricardo, 1817) · links to the Bel Canto Korea–Thailand exercise.
If the autarky opening was on, every result screen shows GDP at the moment borders opened. Who gained most from trade, in absolute and in percentage terms?
Gains from trade · consumption beyond the PPF.
Raw materials versus physical and human capital. Which real economies resemble each nation? The country dossiers name archetypes to anchor the discussion.
Factor endowments (Heckscher–Ohlin): nations export what uses their abundant factor intensively.
What did a pair of scissors cost in sheets of paper at minute five versus minute fifteen? Why did that ratio move?
Terms of trade · commodity dependence.
Any broken deals or cartels? What would enforceable contracts, a court, or a WTO-style referee have changed?
Institutions · GATT/WTO · trade policy.
A nation can be worse at everything and still gain from trade, if it specialises where its opportunity cost is lowest. Have a student state it, then test it against the session's data.
Which real-world events mirror the glut, the boom and the rally? What protects a one-good economy?
Trade raised total output, but not everyone equally. What can policy (aid, technology transfer, tariffs, subsidies) do about it, and at what cost?
Send students to the in-app Academy for the full write-ups.
After the debrief, ask the class to open Feedback & Survey from their sidebar. Responses appear here live, and can be exported as a CSV for your own research or for a teaching-and-learning submission.
Academy
Tap the rivets in order · 3 misses scraps the batch
Advantage Lab
Allocate workers between two goods in two economies and watch opportunity cost, absolute and comparative advantage, and the gains from specialisation emerge. Built around two classic worked examples.
Each nation's frontier, its current point, and the combined economy. Specialisation pushes the world point beyond the summed autarky frontier.
Short-run comparative advantage depends only on productivity. In the long run, unit labour cost (wage ÷ productivity) decides where production actually locates. Slide the relative wage and watch which plant is cheapest per unit.
Assessment
Questions are drawn at random from a bank spanning the theory of trade, opportunity cost, factor endowments, terms of trade and policy. Each attempt is a fresh randomised set, mirroring a Blackboard-style pool. Full worked explanations follow every question.
Game 2 · National Auction
Governments bid against one another for the national priorities they value most. Every sum committed to one priority is a sum not available for another. Secure the lots your government values, then justify what was forgone. The result is decided by points, not by expenditure.
All settings may be changed at any time and take effect immediately.
Resets on every new bid. When it runs out, nothing sells automatically \u2014 you press SOLD when ready.
Facilitator view: this screen should be projected. Teams bid from the floor and the facilitator records each bid.
Strategy huddle
Decide which lots matter most, what each is worth to your country, and the maximum you will pay. Record your reasoning, as you will be asked to present it.
The auction house
National Auction · debrief
Each country presents and defends its portfolio. Award justification points for the clearest reasoning rather than the largest expenditure. Allow ten to fifteen minutes for this discussion.
Lot points · justification · thrift
Fills in automatically as each lot sells.
National Auction · live
Choose your country once. Your device will then be able to place bids on its behalf for the rest of the session.
Waiting for your instructor to open a lot…
Origins, credits & acknowledgements
Good teaching games have long lineages. Both games here stand on the work of others, and this page records that debt precisely: who created the originals, how they worked, what is original to this software, and how it is licensed.
Feedback
Anonymous: no names, no email addresses, no student numbers are collected. Responses stay on this device unless you are in a live room, in which case only the answers, never any identifier, are sent to the facilitator's screen.
Resources & references