![]() A player can play action cards in the middle discard pile.Įach player is dealt 5 cards at the start of the game and then picks up 2 cards from the remaining draw pile at the beginning of each turn.Įach player can play up to 3 cards per turn. A player can play property cards face up in front of them in their property section.ģ. A player can place money cards or action cards (rent, house, hotel, force deal, pass go, etc) face up in their bank.Ģ. There are 3 places where cards can be played during a turn:ġ. For example, the dark blue set only needs 2 dark blue property cards to be completed and the black railroad set needs 4 railroad property cards to be a completed set. Each property card tells you how many property cards you need of that color to complete the set. In the end, another classic Monopoly lesson is learned: When you talk too much, you run out of time and you never finish the game.The objective of the game is to be the first player to complete 3 full property sets on the table in front of you. "But it does show the kind of independent creative contracts that can be created in the real world and in this game."Īt this point, the economics professors start talking about using options pricing theory and computer simulations to figure out the proper value for such a contract. "The rent will not be the stated $250 - it will be $750," Roberts says. Roberts, for instance, offers to bump up the rent on Mediterranean Avenue if it's taken off his hands. Now they're negotiating and thinking creatively. It turns out that when you bend the rules, Monopoly starts to feel like a very shrewd educational tool. "I view it more like a Greek government bond," Hammermesh says. Roberts offers up a share of the income from one of his properties: "It's a sure thing it's triple-A." By now, the players are running out of cash, and this is when those stodgy Monopoly rules go out the window. Hammermesh has more new houses than an Arizona suburb. Roberts now has Park Place and Boardwalk. "You might learn, if you are good at Monopoly, to think that real estate is a really good investment - a strategic insight that would have served you very badly, at least recently," Roberts says. In the new game, driving people out of business was a good thing.īut looking at Monopoly in post-recession 2010, the rules seem like a sure way to crash an economy: The bank can never run out of money, mortgages are easy to get, and when you build houses the rent always goes up. Parker Brothers later put out its version of Monopoly. Patented in 1904, it was called "The Landlord's Game" and was used to demonstrate how property owners could bankrupt their poor renters. The precursor of the modern version of the game was designed to teach lessons about the economy. ![]() Thinking about the educational value of Monopoly is not the strangest exercise. That doesn't stop Roberts from trying to cream his opponents, though. The landlord gains money at no cost, and that's a very unrealistic lesson." "In Monopoly, a roll of the dice forces you to pay large sums of money to a landlord, who you don't know," Roberts says. There's no innovation, no mutual benefits - it's all about grinding your opponents to dust. He has written about how it presents a warped view of capitalism. ![]() And learning, for example, with 1,500 bucks, not to go buying railroads as Russ just did."īut Roberts, the proud new owner of Pennsylvania Railroad, has a pretty low opinion of Monopoly. ![]() "Because the 1,500 bucks, you've got to make choices. "You learn decision rules, and maybe a little bit of optimizing under constraints," Hammermesh says. Hammermesh finds plenty of positive lessons for children who play the game. Hammermesh avoids buying utilities and those nasty green-colored properties, while Roberts will snap up anything he lands on. The Scottie dog is not in high demand.īoth professors have played Monopoly since they were children but with very different takes on the game. According to one of them, it "illustrates a tremendous diversity of preferences in people, even about something as mundane as this."Īs the game gets started, Dan Hammermesh of the University of Texas at Austin says he's "a top-hat guy." Russ Roberts of George Mason University says he prefers the car. Just picking out the game tokens prompts a lesson in choice theory. If you think a regular Monopoly game takes forever, try playing with two economics professors. A family plays Monopoly in the kitchen of their home in Jericho, Vt. ![]()
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