TALLER VENTAJAS COMPARATIVAS

Hola mis niños, este es el taller que deben entregar el martes 16 de febrero de 2010, son solo 5 preguntas y de una vez salimos de una lectura en ingles. Los que lo contesten en ingles tienen puntos adicionales.

Haganlo ustedes mismos, los que aprenden son ustedes, no los que les ayuden a resolverlo ni a traducirlo, porque ellos ya saben microeconomía e ingles.

1. Maria can read 20 pages of economics in an hour. She can also read 50 pages of sociology in an hour. She spends 5 hours per day studying.
a. Draw Maria’s production possibilities frontier for reading economics and sociology.
b. What is Maria’s opportunity cost of reading 100 pages of sociology?
2. American and Japanese workers can each produce 4 cars a year. An American worker can produce 10 tons of grain a year, whereas a Japanese worker can produce 5 tons of grain a year. To keep things simple, assume that each country has 100 million workers.
a. For this situation, construct a table analogous to Table 3-1.
b. Graph the production possibilities frontier of the American and Japanese economies.
c. For the United States, what is the opportunity cost of a car? Of grain? For Japan, what is the opportunity cost of a car? Of grain? Put this information in a table analogous to
Table 3-3.
d. Which country has an absolute advantage in producing cars? In producing grain?
e. Which country has a comparative advantage in producing cars? In producing grain?
f. Without trade, half of each country’s workers produce cars and half produce grain. What quantities of cars and grain does each country produce?
g. Starting from a position without trade, give an example in which trade makes each country better off.
3. Pat and Kris are roommates. They spend most of their time studying (of course), but they leave some time for their favorite activities: making pizza and brewing root beer. Pat takes 4 hours to brew a gallon of root beer and 2 hours to make a pizza. Kris takes 6 hours to brew a gallon of root beer and 4 hours to make a pizza.
a. What is each roommate’s opportunity cost of making a pizza? Who has the absolute advantage in making pizza? Who has the comparative advantage in making pizza?
b. If Pat and Kris trade foods with each other, who will trade away pizza in exchange for root beer?
c. The price of pizza can be expressed in terms of gallons of root beer. What is the highest price at which pizza can be traded that would make both roommates better off? What is the lowest price?
Explain.
4. The following table describes the production possibilities of two cities in the country of Baseballia:

a. Without trade, what is the price of white socks (in terms of red socks) in Boston? What is the price in Chicago?
b. Which city has an absolute advantage in the production of each color sock? Which city has a comparative advantage in the production of each color sock?
c. If the cities trade with each other, which color sock will each export?

5. Are the following statements true or false? Explain in each case.
a. “Two countries can achieve gains from trade even if one of the countries has an absolute advantage in the production of all goods.”
b. “Certain very talented people have a comparative advantage in everything they do.”
c. “If a certain trade is good for one person, it can’t be good for the other one.”