The Campus Parking Game: A Demonstration of Price Discrimination and Efficiency

This article presents a classroom game that allows students to directly experience the welfare improvements that can result from price discrimination. The demonstration uses a very familiar decision-making scenario, campus parking, to introduce the concept of price discrimination as well as reinforce the concepts of opportunity cost, consumer surplus, and search costs. This game can be used in a variety of classes, including principles, intermediate theory, industrial organization, or environmental economics, and can be conducted in a 50-minute class period with follow-up discussion in the next class.