Forecasting Stochastic Cash Flows – Liquidity Management In A Board Game

In our article, we model the fundamental dilemma of corporate liquidity management—the stochastic nature of revenues and expenditures—using the board game called "Hotel," which provides a complex yet realistic representation of these dynamics. The objective of the paper is multifaceted: on the one hand, we seek to develop an experience-based teaching methodology suitable for today’s university students to build fundamental financial intuitions. On the other hand, the steps of constructing and programming the model are integrated into the curricula of several university courses. The applied serious game is not aimless; the reader/student experiences that during decision-making, it is crucial to consider not only the expected cash flows but also the entire distribution behind them. Even within a fully controlled and transparent framework, it is necessary to account for extreme outcomes, which we address using Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) in the article. By the end of the paper, the stochastic nature underlying the decision criteria, often presented as simple calculated values, becomes apparent.