TRADE WINDS: A Comparative Advantage Game

Trade Winds is a strategy based economics simulation that teaches comparative advantage and opportunity cost through hands-on production and trading. Players run an island economy with a fixed amount of labor and must decide how to split their time between producing microchips and growing mangoes. Every hour spent making one good is an hour not spent making the other, forcing students to confront opportunity cost in a concrete and measurable way.

Each level pairs the player with a neighboring island that has a different production profile. In some scenarios the neighbor is faster at one good, in others the player is faster at everything, and in the most advanced level both sides have tradeoffs that are not obvious at first glance. The neighbor island automatically specializes based on comparative advantage rather than raw speed, meaning it chooses the good that costs it the least in lost production, just like a real economy would.

You receive a game guide with a student worksheet and a direct link to the game for sharing with your students. If you are a teacher and are worried about the game being blocked by your school's server, contact us; there are two easy ways to make the game available besides the direct link.

One license per educator.