Question

Consider two neighboring island countries called Felicidad and Arcadia. They each have 4 million labor hours available per week that they can use to produce jeans, rye, or a combination of both. The following table shows the amount of jeans or rye that can be produced using 1 hour of labor.
Jeans Rye
Country (Pairs per hour of labor) (Bushels per hour of labor)
Felicidad 5 20
Arcadia 8 16
Initially, suppose Arcadia uses 1 million hours of labor per week to produce jeans and 3 million hours per week to produce rye while Felicidad uses 3 million hours of labor per week to produce jeans and 1 million hours per week to produce rye. Consequently, Felicidad produces 15 million pairs of jeans and 20 million bushels of rye, and Arcadia produces 8 million pairs of jeans and 48 million bushels of rye. Assume there are no other countries willing to trade goods, so, in the absence of trade between these two countries, each country consumes the amount of jeans and rye it produces.
1. Suppose that each country completely specializes in the production of the good in which it has a comparative advantage, producing only that good. In this case, the country that produces jeans will produce _____ million pairs per week, and the country that produces rye will produce ____ million bushels per week.

Answer 1

Answer:

Felicidad 80 million Jean

Arcadie    32 million Rye

Explanation:

To know which is the best in Rye production we haveto pick the one with the least opportunity cost (the country which producing Rye decreases less the production of Jeans)

Felicidad Rye opportunity cost 20/5 = 4  Jeans

Arcadia Rye opportunity cost  16/8 = 2 jeas

Arcadie will be the country with comparative advantage for Rye as it renounce to less units of Jeans than Felicidad

The best country for jean production will be Felicidad

4m x 20 = 80m jean

The best country for Rye will be Arcadia

4m x 8 = 32m Rye