Chapter 33: Q. 21. (page 804)
Look at Table 33.9. Is there a range of trades for which there will be no gains?
Short Answer
The role of comparative advantage and opportunity cost is an important factor to determine the gains or no gains from trade.
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Chapter 33: Q. 21. (page 804)
Look at Table 33.9. Is there a range of trades for which there will be no gains?
The role of comparative advantage and opportunity cost is an important factor to determine the gains or no gains from trade.
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Why might intra-industry trade seem surprising from the point of view of comparative advantage?
Can a nation鈥檚 comparative advantage change over time? What factors would make it change?
France and Tunisia both have Mediterranean climates that are excellent for producing/harvesting green beans and tomatoes. In France it takes two hours for each worker to harvest green beans and two hours to harvest a tomato. Tunisian workers need only one hour to harvest the tomatoes but four hours to harvest green beans. Assume there are only two workers, one in each country, and each works 40 hours a week.
a. Draw a production possibilities frontier for each country. Hint: Remember the production possibility frontier is the maximum that all workers can produce at a unit of time which, in this problem, is a week.
b. Identify which country has the absolute advantage in green beans and which country has the absolute advantage in tomatoes.
c. Identify which country has the comparative advantage.
d. How much would France have to give up in terms of tomatoes to gain from trade? How much would it have to give up in terms of green beans?
What factors does Paul Krugman identify that supported expanding international trade in the 1800s?
Review the numbers for Canada and Venezuela from Table 19.12 which describes how many barrels of oil and tons of lumber the workers can produce. Use these numbers to answer the rest of this question.
a. Draw a production possibilities frontier for each country. Assume there are 100 workers in each country. Canadians and Venezuelans desire both oil and lumber. Canadians want at least 2,000 tons of lumber. Mark a point on their production possibilities where they can get at least 3,000 tons.
b. Assume that the Canadians specialize completely because they figured out they have a comparative advantage in lumber. They are
willing to give up 1,000 tons of lumber. How much oil should they ask for in return for this lumber to be as well off as they were with no trade? How much should they ask for if they want to gain from trading with Venezuela? Note: We can think of this 鈥渁sk鈥 as the relative price or trade price of lumber.
c. Is the Canadian 鈥渁sk鈥 you identified in (b) also beneficial for Venezuelans? Use the production possibilities frontier graph for Venezuela to show that Venezuelans can gain from trade.
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