The simulator
Run the economy, budget, trade-offs
Choose an economy, pull the levers a finance minister and a central bank actually hold, and watch growth, inflation, debt and unemployment respond over three years — with every mechanism explained and every multiplier shown.
A teaching model — not a forecast
Load a scenario
The economy you are running
The central bank's main lever. Raising it makes borrowing costlier, so investment and big-ticket spending slow — that cools inflation but drags on growth and raises unemployment. Cutting does the reverse. Effects arrive with a lag of several months.
Government building — roads, power, rail. The strongest multiplier here, because it employs people directly today and raises the economy's productive capacity tomorrow. It is borrowed money, so debt rises before the returns arrive.
Direct transfers to households. Money goes to people most likely to spend it immediately, so demand responds fast — the quickest way to support an economy in a shock, and the quickest way to widen the deficit.
Raising taxes pulls demand out of the economy and repairs the budget; cutting them leaves money with households and firms and widens the deficit. The trade-off is growth today against fiscal room tomorrow.
A tax on imports. It shelters domestic producers, but it raises the price of every imported input and finished good — so it pushes inflation up, and trading partners usually retaliate against your exports. Protection rarely comes free.
The central bank buying government bonds to push down long-term borrowing costs when the policy rate is already near zero. It supports investment and asset prices, and it expands the money supply — which is why its inflation effect arrives late and is argued about fiercely.
– – baseline · — with your policies · years 1–3
Government spending, year 3
28.0%
of GDP (baseline 28%)
FDI inflows, year 3
1.80%
of GDP (baseline 1.8%)
Inequality pressure
— broadly flat
direction only, not a Gini figure
What your policies are doing
- Move any lever — or load a scenario above — and the Digest explains the mechanism it triggers. Every effect fades over the three years as the economy adjusts.
Show the arithmetic — every number this model uses
growth = baseline + 1.4·infra + 0.9·welfare − 0.6·taxRise − 0.45·rateRise − 0.22·tariff + 0.35·qe
inflation = baseline + 0.3·netDemand − 0.55·rateRise + 0.28·tariff + 0.22·qe (floor −1%)
debt′ = debt + deficit − debt·nominalGrowth/100
unemployment′ = unemployment − 0.45·(growth − baseline) [Okun's rule of thumb]
confidence = 100 + 4·Δgrowth − 3·Δinflation − 2·Δunemployment
currency = 100 + 2.5·rateRise − 1.8·Δinflation + 0.8·Δgrowth
fdi = baseline + 0.35·Δgrowth − 0.15·Δinflation + 0.1·rateRise
spending = baseline + infra + welfare
inequality = −0.8·welfare + 0.5·Δinflation + 0.2·taxRise (direction only)
effects fade ×1, ×0.6, ×0.35 across years 1–3; rate effects arrive with a lag
Real economies are not this polite: multipliers vary by country and moment, expectations shift, and central banks answer back. Inequality in particular is shown as a direction, not a Gini figure, because no honest one-line formula produces one. That is exactly the point — change the levers, watch the trade-offs, then argue with the model. Arguing with models is what economists do.