Which of the following concepts explains the decision to re-locate market-oriented factories in the United States from the Midwe
st and North east to locations in the southern United States or Mexico? A. Comparative advantage, because products can be made more efficiently in the southern United States and Mexico. Operating costs and wages are lower, and the manufactured products are easily transported to major United States markets.
B. Growth poles, because governments in southern United States cities and Mexico strive to stimulate economic development by providing a guaranteed market for all products manufactured at these locations.
C. Just-in-time delivery, because the United States population is shifting to the south and west, and the Mexican population is growing. It is critical to produce goods closer to the consumer base to reduce shipping times.
D. Complementarity, because the regional economy of the midwestern and north eastern United States is shifting to the service sector. There is little interest in maintaining manufacturing at these locations.
E. Post-Fordist production, because traditional midwestern and north eastern manufacturing centers in the United States are unable to keep up with the technological changes of modern industry.
Answer: A. Comparative advantage, because products can be made more efficiently in the southern United States and Mexico. Operating costs and wages are lower, and the manufactured products are easily transported to major United States markets.
Explanation: Comparative advantage of a location is the ability to produce a good at lower cost than elsewhere. Lower wages, as well as lower operating costs in Mexico and Southern states achieve this comparative advantage by reducing total cost. Their locations are still quite close to the Midwest and North east, in contrast with popular outsourcing locations such as China. It therefore makes sense to relocate factories to these locations.
Because the Earth rotates on its axis, circulating air is deflected toward the right in the Northern Hemisphere and toward the left in the Southern Hemisphere. This deflection is called the Coriolis effect.
This question is related to a picture. In the picture you can see that a small town was affected by a landslide located near a steep hill. As the statement reads, it can be a destructive process as not only is the countryside affected by removal of the top earth layer along with all the vegetation in that area, consequence of heavy rainfall or a mayor earthquake or shift in landmass, but it also turns into a constructive process as at the bottom of the hill, where the landslide or mud accumulates, the debris forms a new layer over the old and it is then seen as constructive.
