The comparative advantage can also be demonstrated with agents rather than countries. Let’s say that Angela Merkel and her husband live in a world in which Merkel has not retired yet, and they need only two goods, chancellorship for Germany and academic physics papers. Angela Merkel is a politician and a physicist, she can produce policies for Germany at a cost of 80 hours work, and physics papers at the cost of 90 hours work. Her husband is not a politician, so his cost of producing policies for Germany is high (120 hours). He is a chemist rather than a physicist, so he is also worse at writing physics papers, but his education is close enough, he can write a paper within 100 hours.
They both have a budget of 1000 work hours left before retirement (i.e. Merkel has 1000h and her husband also has 1000h). As in real life, it is possible to produce imperfect policies and working papers rather than peer-reviewed articles (e.g., 1.45 policies and 1.9 papers). If they trade optimally, how much do they each produce?
Merkel produces ____ policies and ____ papers.
Her husband produces ___ policies and ____ papers.
