Explain how specialisation benefits customers
Answers
Explanation:
Consumer benefits: Specialization means that the opportunity cost of production is lower, which means that globally more goods are produced and prices are lower. Consumers benefit from these lower prices and greater quantity of goods.
Whenever a country has a comparative advantage in production it can benefit from specialization and trade. However, specialization can have both positive and negative effects on a nation's economy. The effects of specialization (and trade) include:
Greater efficiency: Countries specialize in areas that they are naturally good at and also benefit from increasing returns to scale for the production of these goods. They benefit from economies of scale, which means that the average cost of producing the good falls (to a certain point) because more goods are being produced . Similarly, countries can benefit from increased learning. They simply are more skilled at making the product because they have specialized in it. These effects both contribute to increased overall efficiency for countries. Countries become better at making the product they specialize in.
Consumer benefits: Specialization means that the opportunity cost of production is lower, which means that globally more goods are produced and prices are lower. Consumers benefit from these lower prices and greater quantity of goods.
Opportunities for competitive sectors: Firms gain access to the whole world market, which allows them to grow bigger and to benefit further from economies of scale.
Gains from trade: Suppose that Britain and Portugal each produce wine and cloth. Britain has a comparative advantage in cloth and Portugal in wine . By specializing and then trading, Britain can get a unit of wine for only 100 units of labor by trading cloth for labor instead of taking 110 units of labor to produce the wine itself (assuming the price of Cloth to Wine is 1). Similarly, Portugal can specialize in wine and get a unit of cloth for only 80 units of labor by trading, instead of the 90 units of labor it would take to produce the cloth domestically. Each country will continue to trade until the price equals the opportunity cost, at which point it will decide to just produce the other good domestically instead of trading. Thus (in this example with no trade costs) both countries benefit from specializing and then trading.
Of course, there are also some potential downsides to specialization:
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