compartive advantage
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The ability to produce a single product more efficiently than any other nation is an absolute advantage. The ability to produce a product more efficiently than another product is a comparative advantage. The difference in absolute advantage and comparable advantage is that for absolute advantage there is no other country that can produce the product more efficiently based on cost and productivity. Comparable advantage does not exclude the ability of another country or entity to produce the same product but implies that due to the cost or resources that will be used to produce the product it is not resource efficient and should be produced or provided by another company or person.
An example of absolute advantage is the ability of Costa Rica to produce bananas more cheaply than Canada. While Canada can produce more wheat than Costa Rica. Therefore, each has an absolute advantage over the other in producing a specific product or good. Another example, the United States has an absolute advantage in cheese production relative to France while France has the absolute advantage over the US in producing wine. An example of comparable advantage is that Portugal is more productive than England in the production of both cloth and wine. If Portugal is twice as productive in cloth production relative to England but three times as productive in wine, the Portugals comparative advantage is in wine, the good in which its productivity advantage is greatest...