What is meant by comparative advantage?

Comparative advantage refers to a country's ability to produce a good or service at a lower opportunity cost than another country. Opportunity cost is the 'next best alternative forgone'. So for simplicity let's imagine that in a country's economy only two possible goods are produced, cola drinks and pizza. So, for example if the country wants to produce and additional unit of pizzas, it has to produce 3 units less of cola drinks. The opportunity cost of producing an extra unit of pizza is 3 cola drinks. This because the country is having to forgo producing 3 units of cola. Imagine there are two economies producing both pizza and cola drinks. Country A must give up 3 units of cola drinks to produce an extra unit of pizza. Country B however, only has to produce 1 less unit of cola drinks to be able to produce an additional unit of pizza. Therefore, in this scenario, country B has the comparative advantage in producing pizza. This because country B can produce pizza at a lower opportunity cost.

ZT

Related Economics A Level answers

All answers ▸

Evaluate the usefulness a knowledge of perfect competition theory in analysing the behaviour of firms. [15]


What is the basic economic problem?


Explain what is meant by the term ‘negative externality’ and explain how excessive consumption of alcohol leads to negative externalities.


If the market price of a good is above the equilibrium price, explain the chain of events that should occur to return the price of the good to equilibrium