ABSOLUTE ADVANTAGE &

COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE
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A rabbi and a priest are in a field of strawberries dotted with tall apple trees. In order to
meet their Maker, they must thoroughly harvest their hectare. The priest is 7 feet tall; the
rabbi is a pisher (5 feet tall, for those of you not fluent in Yiddish). Who should do what?
Duh. The tall guy picks the apples; the short guy harvests the strawberries. Easy call.
Thats comparative advantage the rabbi is vertically-challenged so he has a
comparative advantage picking things low whereas the priest is high so he may pick
unforbidden fruit.
The notion follows that countries have similar advantages: Kiwi grows easily in New
Zealand, and not so easily in Saudi Arabia. Now Saudi gardeners could probably build
shade, import soil, and mist-ify water to try and replicate the natural conditions of New
Zealand but why? Why not just let the Kiwis grow their kiwis and ship em (on boats
powered by Saudi oil).
Before we get too carried away, let's stop for the four key terms you're going to need to
master to fully understand international trade:

Absolute advantage refers to a countrys ability to produce a certain good more

efficiently than another country.

Specialization refers to a countrys decision to specialize in the production of a

certain good or list of goods because of the advantages it possesses in their
production.

Opportunity cost refers to what you sacrifice in making an economic choice. In

this instance, it refers to the value of the goods you sacrifice in deciding to
produce one good instead of another.

Comparative advantage refers to a countrys ability to produce a particular good

with a lower opportunity cost than another country.
Did we lose you around opportunity cost?
Lets think about these in terms of individuals instead of nations and choices we all
understand... like trying to decide whether to become a fry cook or a heart surgeon.
(That's a debate we have internally just about every single day.)
Lets say you're a wonderful fry cook and a talented heart surgeon. Your neighbor is a
pretty good fry cook and (since he is near-sighted and has a severe hand tremor) an
absolute butcher as a surgeon.
You have an absolute advantage over your neighbor as a fry cook. He just cant hang
with you around a pan of sizzling lard. And you also possess an absolute advantage
over him as a surgeonyour patients actually survive their surgeries occasionally.
Which career should you pursue? To become a fry cook, you must sacrifice your far
more lucrative work as a heart surgeon; your opportunity cost is very high. On the other
hand, your moderately skilled fry-cooking neighbor has a relatively low opportunity cost
to pursue a career as a fry cook he only has to sacrifice his malpractice-suit-waiting-
to-happen career as a surgeon. Therefore your neighbor has a comparative advantage
in fry cooking... even though you're objectively a better fry cook than he is.
The real world is far more complicated than this. But David Ricardo, an early
nineteenth-century British economist, argued that these simple principles can be used
to explain international trade. Countries, not just individuals, possess certain
advantages. Climate, geography, the skills and size of their labor force, the ability to
grow or not grow kiwi fruitthese all contribute to make a country good at producing
certain things. And countries, like individuals, also have to make certain sacrifices in
deciding which of the goods that they can produce they should produceto produce
corn instead of wheat, cars instead of boats, computer chips instead of refrigerators.
Being rational operators, they eventually produce those products in which they have a
comparative advantage, those goods having a comparatively low opportunity cost.
As a result, we have international marketplace filled with all sorts of good stuff.
Countries identify their comparative advantages and sell the resulting goods in the
international market. Brazil sells coffee, Estonia builds ships, and Palau exports
coconuts. These are the fruits of comparative advantage.
America's Leading Exports(in billions of America's Leading Imports(in billions of
dollars) dollars)
1 Civilian Aircraft 74 1 Crude Oil 341.9
2 Semiconductors 50.6 2 Cars 125.6
3 Cars 49.6 3 Medical Preparations 78.9
4 Pharmaceutical Preparations 40 4 Car Accessories 64.9
5 Car Accessories 39.9 5 Other Household Goods 61.6
6 Other Industrial Machines 38.1 6 Computer Accessories 60.2
7 Fuel Oil 34.9 7 Oil Products 52.3
8 Organic chemicals 33.4 8 Cotton Apparel 49.5
9 Telecommunications 32.9 9 Telecommunications Equipment 44.8
10 Plastic Materials 31.6 10 Video Equipment 41
Why It Matters Today
Do you know what you want to be when you grow up? Choosing a career is one of the
most important choices you'll make in your entire life. If don't want to make the wrong
choice, you'd better think about comparative advantageboth your own as an individual
and your country's in the international market.
If you're living in the United States, it really doesn't matter if you're the world's most
talented stitcher of men's underpants. Other nations where labor is much cheaper (hey
there, Indonesia!) have such a strong comparative advantage over the high-wage
United States in the underwear assembly industry that you'll never be able to find and
keep a job in that field.