EC3024 – International Economics Session 2016/2017
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EC3024 – International Economics
Session 2016/2017
SECTION A
YOU MUST ANSWER AT LEAST ONE QUESTION FROM THIS SECTION.
1. Use the information in the table below to answer the following questions:
|
Unit labour requirement αL |
Labour Endowment |
|
|
Cars |
Clothes |
|
UK |
8 |
10 |
200 |
India |
50 |
40 |
800 |
(a) What is the pattern of absolute advantage in the production of Cars and Clothes?
Explain your answer.
(b) What is the opportunity cost of each good in each country? Explain your answer.
(c) Define the production possibility frontier. Write its expression and derive its slope. Use graphical analysis to determine the two countries’ autarky equilibria.
(d) Analyse the pattern of comparative advantage and the opportunities for trade between the two countries.
(e) How will the international prices be determined?
(f) What is the effect of trade on “real” wages?
2. Consider two countries, Home and Foreign, each producing two goods: smartphones and corn. Labour is used in the production of both goods, is free to move between the two industries, and it is subject to diminishing returns. In addition to labour, there are two sector specific factors of production: land, which is used in the production of corn, and capital which is used in the production of smartphones.
(a) Draw a graph of the home country’s production possibility frontier and explain how
the price of smartphones relatively to corn is determined in the absence of trade.
(b) Using a graph, explain the allocation of labour between the two sectors and the
wage level under autarky.
Question 2 continued:
Assuming that in Home the autarkic relative price of smartphones is lower than in Foreign, answer the following questions:
(c) In which good does the Home country have a comparative advantage?
(d) Explain the opportunities for trade between the two countries and the effects of trade on relative prices and consumers’ utility.
(e) Explain how trade affects the sector specific and mobile factors of production in each
country.
(f) Who will benefits from trade in the Home country?
3. Consider the following example: the UK is abundant in capital (K) and Malaysia is abundant in labour (L). Considering the production of cars (C) and T-shirts (T) answer the following questions:
(a) Graphically demonstrate the pre-trade and post trade equilibria between these
two countries. Carefully explain your answer.
(b) Find and label the ‘trade triangles’ for each country. Carefully explain your answer.
(c) Explain carefully which factors gain and which factors lose when trade arises between these countries.
4. Some advocates of Brexit argued that by exiting the European Union the United Kingdom would be able to raise tariffs on imports from low wage countries. Carefully answer the following questions:
(a) Assuming that the UK cannot affect international prices of goods, how would this
policy affect the UK’s welfare?
(b) Who could potentially gain from that policy?
(c) Would your answer be different if the UK could affect international prices? Illustrate your arguments graphically.
(d) Would this type of policy be compatible with the ‘WTO option’ that the UK may adopt after it exits the European Union?
SECTION B
YOU MUST ANSWER AT LEAST ONE QUESTION FROM THIS SECTION.
5. In his Nobel Lecture (2008), Paul Krugman argued that the ‘trade puzzle’ highlighted by empirical evidence could be explained by ‘making use of monopolistic competition models’ which could ‘offer a picture of international trade that completely bypassed conventional arguments based on comparative advantage’. Carefully answer the following questions:
(a) What is the nature of the ‘trade puzzle’ Krugman refers to and why could this puzzle not be explained by comparative advantage theories of trade?
(b) How can the monopolistic competition model offer an explanation for this puzzle?
(c) What are the new sources of gain from trade identified by the ‘new’ trade theory that is based on this theoretical framework?
6. Carefully explain the following:
(a) The reasons why a firm wishing to internationalise may choose to undertake
Horizontal Foreign Direct Investment (HFDI).
(b) The factors determining the attractiveness of a country as a destination of HFDI.
(c) The possible implications of BREXIT for the UK as a destination for inward HFDI by overseas multinational corporations.
7. “The evidence resulting from the estimation of the ‘Gravity Equation’ suggests that T. Friedman’s claim that the ‘world is flat’ is greatly exaggerated despite the fall in trade and communication costs” . Carefully discuss this statement.
8. “The ‘modularisation’ of production and the fall in transport and communication costs imply that the mode of operation decision of firms is much more complex since the internalisation strategy of the firm is now intertwined with its internationalisation strategy” . Discuss.
2022-12-06