Hi. Need help with this old exam question. Please help. Thanks in advance! :)
6.1 David Ricardo's example of international trade considered two countries (England and Portugal) and two goods (wine and cloth). The following table describes the number of hours needed to produce a given munber of units of the good in question in the respective countries. Cloth Wine England 1 0 12 Portugal 9 8 a) Which country has an absolute advantage in producing cloth? Which country has an absolute advantage in producing wine? b) What is the opportunity cost of producing cloth in England? What is the opportunity cost of producing cloth in Portugal? W'hich country has a comparative advantage in producing cloth? c) If the two countries are allowed to trade, what will Portugal export? 6.2 Consider a specific factor model with two regions (EU and Vietnam) and two goods, "new" (N) and "old" (O). There are three production factors: high-education labor (H). basic-education labor (B) and capital (K). Good N is produced with high-education labor and capital and good O is produced with low-education labor and capital. Assume that Vietnam has a relatively more basic-education labor and thus exports good O to EU. a) Assume that technological progress in Vietnam lowers the price of O. Illustrate the effect of this lower price of O on production, consumption and welfare in EU using a figure with a production possibility frontier. What is the overall effect on welfare in the EU? b) In a figure with the allocation of capital on the horizontal axis across the two sectors (analogous to figure 7 in Friberg (2020)) show the effects of the fall in good O on the allocation of capital across sectors. What are the effects of the fall in good O on income of basic-education labor and on income of high-education labor in EU?6.3 Assume that demand for apples in Sweden is given by p=40-Q and domestic supply of apples by p= -10+Q_. where p is price in kronor and Q kilos of apples. Assume that the world market price of apples is 5 kronor. a) What is the price of apples in Sweden if there is free trade and how many apples are imported? b) Assume that Sweden imposes a tariff of 5 kronor per kilo of apples. What is the effect on consumer surplus and on domestic producer surplus? How high are tariff revenues? Mat is the deadweight loss of the tariff? India 0.3 - 0.2 0.1 1/256 1/64 1/16 1/4 0.3- China 0.2- 0.1 - 0 1/256 1/64 1/16 1/4 United States 0.3 - 0.2 0.1 - 0 1/256 1/64 1/16 1/4 These distributions can be thought of as histograms - a thick tail to the left implies that there are relatively many firms that have low productivity in that country. Average productivity can be thought of as the average across all the respective firms. Draw distributions to illustrate how India would be affected by: a) Low productive firms not being able to continue and thus exiting from the market b) Highly productive firms growing faster than low productivity firms c) All firms becoming more productive