Comparative Advantage Essay

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Comparative Advantage Analysis Though many countries can produce similar products, it is sometimes advantageous to forgo production on some items, choosing instead to import them, and focus production efforts on others. Factors such as cost and accessibility of resources, skill level of the labor force, and demand affect the relative costs of production. If one product can be produced more efficiently than another, there is opportunity cost involved in using resources to generate less efficiently produced items. Boyes and Melvin (2011) stated that when one item can be produced more efficiently than another it is produced with a comparative advantage. The principle of comparative advantage is applied to trade - if another country can produce something at a lower cost, it makes sense to import the product from that country. World trade operates by this principle, whereby countries produce products with low opportunity cost and import products with high opportunity cost. In doing so, consumption for all countries is increased, which improves economic health. The following paragraphs discuss the flow of trade of Panama and Israel to determine if they follow the theory of comparative advantage. Panama’s primary exports are seafood and other agricultural products. For a developing country with predominately unskilled labor, the opportunity cost for these products will be lower than for other industries that require technological advances and highly skilled labor. Imports include fuel, capital goods, and other items that would carry a high opportunity cost for Panama to produce. Based on the exports and imports of Panama, the trade flow follows the theory of comparative advantage. While Panama is still dependent on agricultural exports as a major part of its foreign trade, a major part of Israel’s transformation from developing nation to industrialized nation status was
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