Introductory Blog Post

Hello, and welcome to my blog, where I’ll be documenting my experiences exploring the exciting intricacies of optimal tax theory through the lens of a classic board game: Monopoly.

Most of us have played Monopoly before–buying, selling, and trading property, collecting rent, having encounters with the law, and dealing with the all-too-real aftermath of the game–but have you ever thought about how the game’s mechanics could reflect real-world economic systems? Surprisingly, Monopoly is an excellent economic simulator with lots of precedence in the literature. By design, it is a microcosm of the economy–studies have found even over-simplified versions of it to be consistent with real economic data.

Taxes, of course, are an integral aspect of the economy–with significant potential to help those in need, but also considerable risk to slow down the entire economy. In this blog, I’ll be conducting simulations of three different tax policies: income taxes, wealth taxes, and land value taxes. Each tax has its unique advantages and disadvantages: income taxes have can be incredibly progressive, but they can also disincentivize productivity/innovation; wealth taxes have similar potential, but can also be difficult to implement and enforce; and land value taxes can incentivize efficient land use (often referred to as “Highest and Best Use”) without those downsides, but they can also be regressive and are unlikely to be easily accepted by the public in America.

By examining the effects of each tax policy on Monopoly, we can hopefully gain insights into their potential impacts on society–specifically, the economic inefficiency versus the redistributional benefits they produce.

Through these simulations, I hope to take a step forward toward determining the method of taxation that maximizes these benefits while minimizing negative impacts on the economy. Of course, this all sounds amazing in theory, but first we need to actually build the simulation’s framework. In other words, I need to establish my base rules, and build those in Python. I will be attempting this over the course of the next week(s?). Stay tuned!