International Trade

Nations trade with one another for the same reason that individuals and business firms within a country trade: both sides expect to benefitfrom the transaction. They benefit because trade enables them to exchange things they don't need (their surplus goods and services) for the things they do need and want. Some areas can produce things that others cannot. Because of its warm climate and the type of soil it has, Florida grows oranges but not wheat. Kansas grows no oranges, but it does grow wheat. The people in Florida and Kansas would like to have wheat and oranges, and so each specializes in one of those crops and trades its surplus with the other.

Manufacturing can also be performed more efficiently in some parts of our country than in others. Natural resources, an adequate labor supply, and transportation facilities have promoted the development of certain industries in particular regions of the country. For example, the computer industry is concentrated in northern California, the steel industry developed in western part. Pennsylvania, and large automobile factories were first built in southern Michigan.

Absolute Advantage. Nations will gain because of differences in terms of climate, natural resources, labor supply, capital, and technology. These differences make it sensible for them to specialize in the production of some products and to buy the other things they need from other countries.

Despite the many advantages of trade between nations, most countries, including our own, often restrict that trade in a number of ways. Some of these ways are discussed below.

Tariffs. A tariff is a duty, or tax, on imports. There are two basic types of tariffs. Revenue Tariffs are levied as a way to raise money. Through most of its history (until 1910), the United States looked to the revenue tariff as its principal source of income. Protective Tariffs are levied to protect a domestic industry from foreign competition. The goal is to make the foreign product more expensive than a similar item produced in the United States. Then people will stop buying the foreign made item and purchase its domestic counterpart.

Quotas. Restrictions on the numbers of certain specified goods that can enter the country from abroad are called quotas. Like protective tariffs, quotas limit the amount of foreign competition a protected industry will have to face. In the 1980's, for example, the government protected the U.S. automobile industry by placing a quota on the number of automobiles that could be imported from Japan.

The Economy

The economy is for us. «The economy» is simply an abstraction that refers to the sum of all our individual production and consumption activities. In order to produce anything, we need resources, or factors of production. Factors of production are the inputs — land, labor, and capital (buildings and machinery) we use to produce final goods and services (output).

Unfortunately, the quantity of available resources is limited. We cannot produce everything we want in the quantities we desire. Resources are scarce relative to our desires. This fact forces us to make difficult choices. Hence the more missiles we build, the less of other goods and services we can produce at the same time.

Opportunity costs exist in all situations where available resources are not abundant enough to satisfy all our desires.

Indeed, economics is often defined as the study of how to allocate scarce resources. The study of economics focuses on «getting the most from what we've got», on making the best use of our scarce resources.

Production possibilities are the alternative combinations of final goods and services that could be produced in a given time period with all available resources and technology.

According to the law of increasing opportunity costs we must give up ever-increasing quantities of other goods and services in order to get more of a particular good. Economic growth is an increase in output; an expansion of production possibilities.

Over time the quantity of resources available for production has also increased. Each year our population grows a bit, thereby enlarging the number of potential workers. Our stock of capital equipment has increased even faster. In addition the quality of our labor and capital resources has improved, as a result of more education (labor) and better machinery (capital).

Market mechanism is the use of market prices and sales to signal desired outputs (or resource allocations).

Thus the essential feature of the market mechanism is the price signal. If you want something and have sufficient income, you buy it. If enough people do the same thing, the total sales of that product will rise, and perhaps its price will as well. Producers, seeing sales and prices rise, will be inclined to increase production.