Development Economics (Audio)

What is comparative advantage? And why is it important to trade? This video guides us through a specific example surrounding Tasmania — an island off the coast of Australia that experienced the miracle of growth in reverse. Through this example we show...

Comparative advantage explains why people trade and what goods they should trade. To illustrate the concept of comparative advantage, we ask: Should Martha Stewart iron her own shirts? Even if Martha Stewart has an absolute advantage in ironing shirts,...

Make sure you’ve completed the homework introduced in the Comparative Advantage video before you watch this video, as we’ll be going over the answer. We take a look at our example which compares shirt and computer production and consumption in Mexico...

We’ll look at the costs and consequences of tariffs, quotas, and protectionism. How do tariffs affect consumers? What about producers? Who wins and who loses? Find out with this video.

We’ll apply the fundamentals we learned in the supply, demand, and...

In this video, we discuss some of the most common arguments against international trade. Does trade harm workers by reducing the number of jobs in the U.S.? Is it wrong to trade with countries that use child labor? Is it important to keep a certain...

In this video, we discuss how markets link people and places all over the world. We’ll take a look at production and consumption markets and, importantly, the role that prices play in it all. Following up on our example of a rose, we take a look at...

In this video, we discuss how different markets are linked to one another. How does the price of oil affect the price of candy bars? When the price of oil increases, it is of course more expensive to transport goods, like candy bars. But there are other...

What does an increase in the price of oil tell us? What does it signal? And how do we adjust to that signal? The price of oil gives users of oil an incentive to respond — by using less oil or substituting lower-cost alternatives for oil.

The key here is...

Speculation is often considered to be morally dubious. But, can speculation actually be useful to the market process? This video shows that speculation can actually smooth prices over time and increase welfare.

Speculators take resources from where they...

We’ve discussed how prices are signals that convey information about goods — but can prices also convey information about events and even predict the future? For instance, can we predict Middle East politics based on the price of oil futures? Or predict...