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Absolute Advantage
In economics, the principle of absolute advantage is the ability of a party (an individual, or firm, or country) to produce a good or service more efficiently than its competitors. The Scottish economist Adam Smith first described the principle of absolute advantage in the context of international trade in 1776, using labor as the only input. Since absolute advantage is determined by a simple comparison of labor productiveness, it is possible for a party to have no absolute advantage in anything. Origin of the theory The concept of absolute advantage is generally attributed to the Scottish economist Adam Smith in his 1776 publication ''The Wealth of Nations,'' in which he countered mercantilist ideas. Smith argued that it was impossible for all nations to become rich simultaneously by following mercantilism because the export of one nation is another nation's import and instead stated that all nations would gain simultaneously if they practiced free trade and specialized in acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, describing "what is", and normative economics, advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics; between rational a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Global Labor Arbitrage
Global labor arbitrage is an economic phenomenon where, as a result of the removal of or disintegration of barriers to international trade, jobs move to nations where labor and the cost of doing business (such as environmental regulations) is inexpensive and/or impoverished labor moves to nations with higher paying jobs.The "global labor arbitrage" phenomenon has been described by economist Stephen S. Roach. See Mike Whitney"Labor arbitrage," ''Entrepreneur'', June 2006. Two common barriers to international trade are tariffs (politically imposed) and the costs of transporting goods across oceans. With the advent of the Internet, the decrease of the costs of telecommunications, and the possibility of near-instantaneous document transfer, the barriers to the trade of intellectual work product, which is essentially, any kind of work that can be performed on a computer (such as computer programming) or that makes use of a college education, have been greatly reduced. Often, a prosper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supply And Demand
In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a Market (economics), market. It postulates that, Ceteris paribus, holding all else equal, in a perfect competition, competitive market, the unit price for a particular Good (economics), good, or other traded item such as Labour supply, labor or Market liquidity, liquid financial assets, will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded (at the current price) will equal the quantity supplied (at the current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity transacted. The concept of supply and demand forms the theoretical basis of modern economics. In macroeconomics, as well, the AD–AS model, aggregate demand-aggregate supply model has been used to depict how the quantity of real GDP, total output and the aggregate price level may be determined in equilibrium. Graphical representations Supply schedule A supply schedule, depicted graphically as a supply cu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ricardian Model
In an economic model, agents have a comparative advantage over others in producing a particular good if they can produce that good at a lower relative opportunity cost or autarky price, i.e. at a lower relative marginal cost prior to trade. Comparative advantage describes the economic reality of the work gains from trade for individuals, firms, or nations, which arise from differences in their factor endowments or technological progress. (The absolute advantage, comparing output per time (labor efficiency) or per quantity of input material (monetary efficiency), is generally considered more intuitive, but less accurate — as long as the opportunity costs of producing goods across countries vary, productive trade is possible.) David Ricardo developed the classical theory of comparative advantage in 1817 to explain why countries engage in international trade even when one country's workers are more efficient at producing ''every'' single good than workers in other countries. He dem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Revealed Comparative Advantage
The revealed comparative advantage is an index used in international economics for calculating the relative advantage or disadvantage of a certain country in a certain class of goods or services as evidenced by trade flows. It is based on the Ricardian comparative advantage concept. It most commonly refers to an index, called the Balassa index, introduced by Béla Balassa Béla Alexander Balassa (6 April 1928 – 10 May 1991) was a Hungarian economist and professor at Johns Hopkins University and a consultant for the World Bank. Balassa is best known for his work on the relationship between purchasing power parit ... (1965). In particular, the revealed comparative advantage of country c in product/commodity/good p is defined by: :RCA_ = \frac , where: That is, the RCA is equal to the proportion of the country's exports that are of the class under consideration, \frac, divided by the proportion of world exports that are of that class, \frac. A comparative advantage is " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relative Price
A relative price is the price of a commodity such as a good or service in terms of another; i.e., the ratio of two prices. A relative price may be expressed in terms of a ratio between the prices of any two goods or the ratio between the price of one good and the price of a market basket of goods (a weighted average of the prices of all other goods available in the market). Microeconomics can be seen as the study of how economic agents react to changes in relative prices, and of how relative prices are affected by the behavior of those agents. The difference and change of relative prices can also reflect the development of productivity. In a demand equation In the demand equation Q=f(P) (in which Q is the number of units of a good or service demanded), P is the relative price of the good or service rather than the nominal price. It is the change in a relative price that prompts a change in the quantity demanded. For example, if all prices rise by 10% there is no change in an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Real Wage
Real wages are wages adjusted for inflation, or, equivalently, wages in terms of the amount of goods and services that can be bought. This term is used in contrast to nominal wages or unadjusted wages. Because it has been adjusted to account for changes in the prices of goods and services, real wages provide a clearer representation of an individual's wages in terms of what they can afford to buy with those wages – specifically, in terms of the amount of goods and services that can be bought. However, real wages suffer the disadvantage of not being well defined, since the amount of inflation (which can be calculated based on different combinations of goods and services) is itself not well defined. Hence real wage defined as the total amount of goods and services that can be bought with a wage, is also not defined. This is because of changes in the relative prices. Despite difficulty in defining one value for the real wage, in some cases a real wage can be said to have unequ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Ricardo
David Ricardo (18 April 1772 – 11 September 1823) was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a member of the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland. Personal life Born in London, England, Ricardo was the third surviving of the 17 children of successful stockbroker Abraham Israel Ricardo (1733?–1812) and Abigail (1753-1801), daughter of Abraham Delvalle (also "del Valle"), of a respectable Sephardic Jewish family that had been settled in England for three generations as "small but prosperous" tobacco and snuff merchants, and had obtained British citizenship. Abigail's sister, Rebecca, was wife of the engraver Wilson Lowry, and mother of the engraver Joseph Wilson Lowry and the geologist, mineralogist, and author Delvalle Lowry. The Ricardo family were Sephardic Jews of Portuguese origin who had recently relocated from the Dut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On The Principles Of Political Economy And Taxation
'' the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation'' (19 April 1817) is a book by David Ricardo on economics. The book concludes that land rent grows as population increases. It also presents the theory of comparative advantage, the theory that free trade between two or more countries can be mutually beneficial, even when one country has an absolute advantage over the other countries in all areas of production. During the Napoleonic Wars, Ricardo grew weary of the Corn Laws, a tax imposed on wheat by the British that made it impossible to import wheat from the rest of Europe. Ricardo, despite his wealth, supported those who could no longer afford grains and bread once the price floor was in effect to support farmers. In his argument, for what is now free trade, Ricardo highlights the idea that if a country can get a good from another country at a lower cost, it would behoove a country to source that item from the cheaper producing country than to produce the good locally. “T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Trade Theory
New trade theory (NTT) is a collection of economic models in international trade theory which focuses on the role of increasing returns to scale and network effects, which were originally developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The main motivation for the development of NTT was that, contrary to what traditional trade models (or "old trade theory") would suggest, the majority of the world trade takes place between countries that are similar in terms of development, structure, and factor endowments. Traditional trade models relied on productivity differences (Ricardian model of comparative advantage) or factor endowment differences ( Heckscher–Ohlin model) to explain international trade. New trade theorists relaxed the assumption of constant returns to scale, and showed that increasing returns can drive trade flows between similar countries, without differences in productivity or factor endowments. With increasing returns to scale, countries that are identical still have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intra-industry Trade
Intra-industry trade refers to the exchange of similar products belonging to the same industry. The term is usually applied to international trade, where the same types of goods or services are both imported and exported. Examples Examples of this kind of trade include automobiles, foodstuffs and beverages, computers and minerals. Europe exported 2.6 million motor vehicles in 2002, and imported 2.2 million of them. Japan exported 4.7 million vehicles in 2002 (1 million of which went to Europe, and 2 million to North America), and imported 0.3 million. Explanation Why do countries at the same time import and export the products of the same industry, or import and export the same kinds of goods? According to Nigel Grimwade, "An explanation cannot be found within the framework of classical or neo-classical trade theory. The latter predicts only inter-industry specialisation and trade". However, this is far from the case. The traditional model of trade were set out by the model of D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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