Comparative Advantage and Trade
The netmba.com site has a collection educational
materials. Here is a simple, standard exposition of the
production-possibilities frontier:
www.netmba.com/econ/micro/production/possibility/
One of the important insights that can be gotten from the
production-possibilities frontier is that exchange can
benefit both parties especially when they are very
different:
www.netmba.com/econ/micro/comparative-advantage/
Alan Blinder explains the case for free trade in this
essay in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:
www.econlib.org/library/Enc/FreeTrade.html
(Since he wrote this piece, he has had some second thoughts,
worrying that the transition costs may sometimes be
unacceptably large:
online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117500805386350446-cRRynUb3zQgR2Yxn8wFOt96EOlE_20070404.html?mod=blogs
)
Paul Krugman shows why he is one of the most effective
polemicist among economists as he takes to task scholars who
write about international trade without understanding the
concept of comparative advantage:
web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm
Jagdish Bhagwati expounds on protectionism and fair trade
in this contribution in The Concise Encyclopedia of
Economics:
www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/Enc/Protectionism.html
One of the insights of economics is that exchange can be
positive-sum. A column in the Washington Post
explains why this insight matters in the world of public
policy:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050700755.html
These links were checked on July 5, 2008.
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Copyright
Robert Schenk
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