{"id":36144,"date":"2019-11-30T01:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T06:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36144"},"modified":"2019-11-29T09:39:52","modified_gmt":"2019-11-29T14:39:52","slug":"qotd-comparative-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/11\/30\/qotd-comparative-advantage\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Comparative advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Business schools, which focus naturally on the fortunes of the individual firm, teach that &#8220;competitiveness&#8221; is all. They believe it follows that government, not price signals from the world economy, should choose winners. The economists in the business schools have had hard time persuading their colleagues that the pattern of trade and specialization is determined, on the contrary, by &#8220;<em>comparative<\/em> advantage,&#8221; which has nothing to do with absolute advantage, and which professors of management and of history regularly mistake it for. Pakistan exports clothing to the United States, the economists preach (without much effect on editorial boards and politicians), not because it is better per hour at making socks and sweaters but because it is <em>comparatively<\/em> better at them than at making jet airplanes and farm tractors.<\/p>\n<p>Deirdre McCloskey, <em>Bourgeois Equality<\/em>, 2016.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Business schools, which focus naturally on the fortunes of the individual firm, teach that &#8220;competitiveness&#8221; is all. They believe it follows that government, not price signals from the world economy, should choose winners. The economists in the business schools have had hard time persuading their colleagues that the pattern of trade and specialization is determined, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,41,13],"tags":[618,1176,484,397],"class_list":["post-36144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-clothing","tag-comparativeadvantage","tag-competition","tag-pakistan"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9oY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36144"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53174,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36144\/revisions\/53174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}