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Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

benoitessiambre.com

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Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#81

Post by toolz »

jcfrei wrote: post #28
mmastrac wrote: post #11

This game needs a "gold standard" mode to see what happens to the toy economy with no central bank! EDIT: It would also be nice if the game paused around major events to give you more time to think & adjust. I found that the economy went off the rails if you don't react right away.

That would result in an economy with huge deflation: People consuming the bare minimum of apples needed for survival because their gold savings would appreciate each year in value.

Historically 90% of families will lose their wealth within 3 generations. How does that jive with "people will save too much" when it seems rather intuitive monetary policy has nothing to do with how a grandkid who has never worked a day in their life, spends money?

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#82

Post by zerocrates »

lotrjohn wrote: post #76

That site has an awesome text/font. Reminds me of a CRT screen with scan lines! Mind sharing?

It's Roboto Mono with a mostly-transparent layer drawing the "scanlines" on top of the whole page using CSS linear-gradient.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#83

Post by [deleted] »

zeusk wrote: post #68
nwah1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under certain Keynesian views, Fed policy is mostly irrelevant, and only fiscal policy matters. Or actual printing... which low rates and QE are very different from. Another view from the neoclassical school has a similar conclusion dubbed the Policy Ineffectiveness Proposition. But others say Fed policy does matter because in the real world contracts and prices are sticky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy-ineffe…

How is QE or low rates not money printing? Low rates causes higher private lending, borrowing creates money (fractional reserve banking). QE also creates money by Federal Reserve buying Treasury's bonds with printed dollars. Both of these are temporary, but we have had QE and low rates for over a decade now. QE was supposed to be unwound in 2018, but covid pushed it to new peaks.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#84

Post by SkyMarshal »

wolpoli wrote: post #36
jbay808 wrote: post #23

Very nice. This reminds me of the game Chair the Fed , published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/chair-fede... Unfortunately, they took it down about a year ago.

That was an insightful game. There was a negative demand shock scenario and to play it properly, it requires first dropping interest rate to 0%, then followed by high interest rate to bring inflation back down over time, which is exactly what's happening in the real world. It's likely that's the reason why they took the game down.

Any idea how it would expect you to handle negative demand shock first, then inflation driven by a subsequent supply shock (instead of or in addition to increased money supply)?

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#85

Post by Wowfunhappy »

toolz wrote: post #81
jcfrei wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would result in an economy with huge deflation: People consuming the bare minimum of apples needed for survival because their gold savings would appreciate each year in value.

Historically 90% of families will lose their wealth within 3 generations. How does that jive with "people will save too much" when it seems rather intuitive monetary policy has nothing to do with how a grandkid who has never worked a day in their life, spends money?

> Historically 90% of families will lose their wealth within 3 generations.

Wait, that's really interesting! Where did you read that?

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#86

Post by vanjajaja1 »

doubleunplussed wrote: post #44
BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #2

I made this game in order to try to wrap my head around central banks, inflation and macroeconomics, in order to get a better understanding of the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the current period of high inflation. Here is a blog post that goes into further details: https://benoitessiambre.com/simcb.html

Thank you so much! I've similarly been trying to wrap my head around monetary things recently, and as with learning anything in physics (my field), I believe you don't really understand a model unless you can code up a simulator. It's been maddening not being able to find a comprehensive model of how all the bits fit together, and I have many times wondered if the lack of existence of a game like yours meant that no…

I've been looking for something similar too, an explanation of the financial system written out in code so that I can try understand it.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#87

Post by forgotmypw17 »

One minor suggestion: Make the Up and Down div "buttons" return false when clicked, so that their text is not highlighted when they're clicked.

Also, if you make them elements instead of , your page will be more accessible to users who depend on their user-agent to know what type of controls they are.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#88

Post by Wowfunhappy »

jbay808 wrote: post #23

Very nice. This reminds me of the game Chair the Fed , published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/chair-fede... Unfortunately, they took it down about a year ago.

> The Fed has updated its approach to monetary policy, and the changes are not readily accommodated within the existing structure of the game. As of June 1, 2021, the game is no longer available.

Honestly, that's incredibly lame. Just stop promoting it and put up a message explaining why you believe it's inaccurate. That would actually be interesting.

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#89

Post by Wowfunhappy »

mmastrac wrote: post #27
jbay808 wrote: post #23

Very nice. This reminds me of the game Chair the Fed , published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: https://www.frbsf.org/education/teacher-resources/chair-fede... Unfortunately, they took it down about a year ago.

I managed to get close to launching it, but someone with more time might be able to find a good timestamp that's playable (or host it on archive.org on its own)... https://web.archive.org/web/20180710122012/http://sffed-educ...

I might be a little closer? I'm in-game but it clearly doesn't work properly. https://web.archive.org/web/20160914125342/http://sffed-educ...

Re: Show HN: A central bank simulator game with a realistic economic model

#90

Post by Aunche »

anm89 wrote: post #24
jb12 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I found that the economy went off the rails if you don't react right away Sounds pretty realistic to me!

While there were panics and issues before the era of active central banks, most fo the time, things were calm. The idea that the world would burst into flames if central banks weren't there to micro tinker is not historically supported. It is far from a fringe viewpoint in the finance world that central banks have contributed more to volatility than to stability over the last 20 years.

The world didn't burst into flames because most people were agrarian and largely self sufficient. Part of the reason the Great Depression was so devastating was because the economy was more interdependent than ever before.
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