The Economy Simulator turns your whole class into one working economy. Every student gets a role, from renter to banker to Finance Minister, and each round they make the decisions that role owns. Prices, wages and rents then come out of what the class actually did, not out of a textbook graph. You set the starting conditions, pace the rounds, act as the central bank, and can hit the economy with a recession or a market crash when you want to see what happens.
Available on: Intertwined Core, Intertwined Plus and Intertwined Pro. On Intertwined Solo, you can start a free 14-day trial from the simulator's locked screen; see Trying a simulator free with a 14-day trial.
What students learn
Supply and demand as something the class produces, rather than a curve to memorize. When landlords raise rents and renters walk away, vacancies show up in the next round's numbers.
The trade-offs in fiscal and monetary policy, felt from inside a role. Taxes fund benefits and enforcement; interest rates change who can borrow.
Why regulation depends on its budget. The Finance Minister funds the Regulator, so a minister who starves enforcement leaves the rules unenforced.
How inequality builds over time, tracked round by round with the Gini coefficient.
How it works
The simulation runs in rounds. During a round, each student opens their role's screen and locks in their decisions: which home to rent and which job to take, what rent to charge, what wage to offer, what loan rates to set, what taxes to levy, which businesses to audit. Nothing happens yet. When you click Advance Round, every decision in the class is resolved together, money changes hands, and each student sees a recap of what happened to them. Then the next round opens.
You pace it: a round can be one class period or stretch over a few days. Students' screens update by themselves when you advance.
The six roles
Renter / Employee: finds housing and work in the marketplace, budgets their wages, and keeps their stress down. Homes and jobs reset every round, so renters choose again each time.
Landlord: sets rents on their properties, keeps them occupied, and covers taxes and maintenance.
Business Owner: hires workers, prices goods, and grows revenue without drawing the Regulator's eye.
Banker: takes deposits, issues loans, and prices risk. Their rates are public; their books are not.
Finance Minister: sets taxes and spending, manages the treasury, and decides how much the Regulator gets to spend on enforcement.
Regulator: writes the rules (rent control, a minimum wage, a loan-rate cap, fee disclosure, antitrust), picks audit targets, and fines violations on a budget they don't control.
Landlords, business owners, bankers, the Finance Minister and the Regulator can also make or receive lobbying offers. Money a Finance Minister accepts goes to the treasury; money a Regulator accepts goes to them personally. That difference makes a good discussion.
There is always exactly one Finance Minister and one Regulator, and at least one of every other role. The rest scale with class size: in a class of 24, you'd get 2 bankers, 4 landlords, 4 business owners and 12 renters. Renters are always the largest group.
Before you start
You need at least 6 students, one per role. With fewer, the activate button stays off and Setup tells you to add students.
Get your roster complete first. Every student in the class when you activate is given a seat. A student who joins afterward isn't in this simulation; they'll see a message saying it started before they joined.
Decide who leads. The Finance Minister and the Regulator steer the whole economy. You can hand those seats to students you know will take them seriously, or leave everything to the app.
Preview it. See all six role screens with sample data first; see Previewing a simulator before your students do.
Setting up and activating
Click Classrooms, open your class, and click the Simulators tab.
Choose Economy Simulator in the Simulator picker and click Setup.
In Roster & Roles, check the count ("24 students will be enrolled", for example). Each student has a role menu set to Auto. Leave a student on Auto to let the app assign them, or pick a role yourself. You can pick as many students as you like, but only one Finance Minister and one Regulator; choosing a second of either shows a warning and keeps the button off until you set the extra back to Auto.
Choose a Scenario. The description under the menu summarizes its starting conditions (more below).
Choose a Deployment Mode: Sprint (1 week, 5 rounds), Standard (3 weeks, 8 rounds, recommended) or Deep (6 weeks, 12 rounds). The number of rounds comes from the mode and can't be changed separately.
Click Activate Economy Sim. Wait for it to finish; click it once.
When it's done, the Simulation Status card shows Live and an Assigned Roles table lists every student and their role, with the two leadership seats at the top. The simulation is now in its lobby: students can open it and see their role and the class roster, but nobody can act until you start round 1 from Open Round Control. See Running Economy Simulator rounds and reading the results.
Roles, the scenario and the number of rounds are fixed once you activate. To change any of them, you'd reset the simulation and activate a new one.
Choosing a scenario
A scenario sets the starting conditions only. After round 1, the economy evolves from what your students do, and any shocks come from the macro events you choose to fire.
Stable Growth: a neutral starting point with no inflation and no major shocks. Best for a first run or a younger class.
2008 Financial Crisis: cheap credit with very low interest rates, banks with half their usual lending money, a housing crash, and less trust in government from the start.
1970s Stagflation: inflation starts high, borrowing is expensive, goods and rent cost more, and the government's credibility is already strained.
Volcker Shock: very high interest rates aimed at crushing inflation. Borrowing is punishing and businesses start out worth less.
Post-COVID Inflation: inflation starts high, households have extra cash, goods are pricier and scarcer, the housing market is hot, and rates are rising off a low base.
Your levers: the Fed and macro events
Once the simulation is live, you control two levers from the Round Control page. Both take effect the next time you advance a round.
Monetary Policy (Fed)
You play the central bank. The form has three fields; fill in only the ones you want to change and leave the rest blank (they show "unchanged"), then click Update Fed Settings.
Base Interest Rate (%): stays in place until you change it. Bankers can't charge a loan rate above twice this number, and their deposit rate has to sit at least half a point below their loan rate. Enter 5 for 5%.
Reserve Requirement (%): also stays in place. It's the share of deposits bankers must hold back instead of lending.
Money Supply Change ($): a one-time pulse for the next round only, then it resets. A positive number adds money to the economy and a negative number takes it out. New money is spread across players in proportion to the cash they already hold, so students with more cash get more, which is worth pointing out.
Important: set a base interest rate before round 1. Until you do, the base rate is 0%, so any banker who updates their rates is capped at a 0% loan rate. Bankers see a note saying the Fed hasn't set a base rate yet.
The form doesn't display current values once you leave the page, so note what you set. Bankers see the current base rate, their cap and the reserve requirement on their Rates tab.
Macro Events
A macro event is a shock to the whole economy. Pick an Event Type, set a Magnitude, optionally add a Description, and click Fire Macro Event. It's queued and applies when you next advance.
Recession: consumer demand falls by up to 30% that round, so people buy less.
SupplyShock: goods prices rise by up to 50% that round.
Pandemic: demand falls by up to 40% and prices rise by up to 20% that round.
BankingCrisis: wipes out part of every banker's lending money. At full strength it wipes out all of it, so use a lower magnitude unless you want the banks to stop lending entirely.
MarketCrash: property and business values fall by up to 40%. The lost value doesn't come back on its own.
TaxLawChange: raises all four tax rates (income, property, business and sales) by up to 5 percentage points. The higher rates stay until the Finance Minister changes them.
Magnitude runs from 0 to 1. The default of 1 is full strength; 0.5 is half. Numbers above 1 are treated as 1. The Description is what students read in their round recap under "In the broader economy", so it's a chance to frame the event ("A factory fire upstate cuts the coffee supply"). If you leave it blank, students see the event's name.
The city
Every student has a City Map tab: the class economy drawn as a town, block by block. Homes with blue roofs and lit windows are occupied; gray roofs with the lights off are empty, so rising vacancy is something students can see. Traffic and pedestrians follow last round's trading, and a pink marker floats over the places that belong to the student looking at it. Three landmarks run the town: the domed Federal Reserve (where you set the interest rate), the Treasury with its clock tower (the Finance Minister) and the Regulator's office. Labels around the edge name each neighborhood.
Students can switch between 3D and Flat map, and turn Labels on or off. If a device can't show 3D graphics, the flat map appears instead.
There's no teacher copy of your class's live city (the student preview shows a sample one). Every student's map shows the whole class's town, so to put it on the board, ask a student to open their City Map.
Resetting or ending early
A simulation ends on its own when you advance past the final round. To end one early, open Setup and click Reset Simulation in the red card at the bottom. The confirmation explains what happens: the simulation ends, the class is released so you can start a new one, students keep their round recaps, and any actions queued for the open round are discarded. It can't be undone.
After a simulation ends either way, Setup goes back to the setup form and shows a Last simulation's report button, so its results stay one click away.
What students see
Students open the Economy Simulator from Simulators in their sidebar. Before you activate, it says their teacher hasn't started one yet. After you activate, they wait in the lobby with their role; from round 1 on, they get their role's screen, a checklist for the round, and a recap after every round. When the last round resolves, their screen becomes a personal final report. See Economy Simulator: how to play.
Tips
Spend the first class on roles. Have students open the lobby, read their role description, and find their own buildings on the City Map before you start round 1.
Set the Fed's base rate (5% is a reasonable start) right after you activate.
Save shocks for after round 2 or 3, once students have a sense of normal. A shock in round 1 has nothing to compare against.
Use Pause on Round Control for a mid-round discussion. It freezes students' moves without losing anything.
Remind renters that homes and jobs reset each round. A renter who forgets to choose is homeless and out of work for that round, and their stress climbs.
Common questions
A student joined my class after I activated. Can I add them?
Not to the running simulation. Seats are handed out at activation, so a late joiner sees a message that they're not in this simulation. They'll be included the next time you start one. If it's early enough that starting over makes sense, you can reset and activate again, but that resets everyone.
Can I change a student's role after activating?
No. Roles are fixed for the run. Pick roles yourself in Roster & Roles before you click Activate Economy Sim if you want control over who plays what.
What happens when a student is absent?
The economy carries on without them. Landlords' rents, business owners' wages and prices, bankers' rates and the Finance Minister's taxes all stay as last set. Renters are hit hardest, because they have to choose a home and a job every round. You can't act for a student, so consider advancing after the absent student is back if the role matters for the lesson.
Can I run the simulation twice with the same class?
Yes, one at a time. When the first one ends (or you reset it), set up and activate a new one. Setup links to the most recent finished run's report, so download or print a report before you start the next run if you want to keep it handy.
Can students see each other's decisions?
Posted rents, wages and bankers' rates are public in the marketplace, and the roster shows everyone's role. Details like a business's value or a banker's lending money stay private. You see everything.