In: Economics
You’re working on a team-based homework assignment with a partner, Deidre, that consists of an essay and graphing questions. You can write an essay answer in 15 minutes while Deidre takes 20 minutes to write an essay of similar quality. You can answer a graphing question in 30 minutes and it also takes Deidre 30 minutes.
What are you and your partner’s opportunity cost of answering essay questions and of finishing graphing questions?
Use the opportunity cost principle to determine each of your comparative advantages.
If you each agree to spend one more hour on the task for which you hold a comparative advantage, and one less hour on the other task, what will happen to your joint output?
Opportunity cost is the revenue or gains that could be gained from the second based alternative available with the person. For example, if a banker has to decide between becoming an enterpreneur or work as an employee in the bank and he chooses to be an enterpreneur, his opportunity cost would be the money which he could earn as a banker and time spent as an enterpreneur.
Likewise, my opportunity cost of answering essay question would be 15 minutes and any other activity or gains from it which I could have done in this duration and opportunity cost of answering graphing question would be 30 minutes and any other activity which I could have done in this 30 minutes and any gains from it in this duration.
Similarly, Deidre's opportunity cost of answering essay question would be 20 minutes and any other activity or gains from it which he could have done in this duration and opportunity cost of answering graphing question would be 30 minutes and any other activity which he could have done in this 30 minutes and any gains from it in this duration.
I take 5 minutes less than Deidre to complete the essay, so I have a comparative advantage of 5 minutes in completing essay work, whereas for Deidre it would be graphing question where he takes equal amount of time than me - 30 minutes.
If I work on essay work for one more hour - my total output would be 60 minutes / 15 minutes = 4 essay work + ( adding 1 essay work which I completed with Deidre ) = 5 essay work + 1 essay work ( completed with Deidre )
Deidre's work on graphing = ( 60 / 30 ) = 2 graphing work + 1 graphing work with me and + 1 essay work = 3 graphing work and 1 essay work.