a specific good, either because of different climates, geography, technology, or skills.

Suppose two countries, the US and Brazil, need to decide how much they will produce of two crops: sugar cane

and wheat. Due to its climatic conditions, Brazil can produce quite a bit of sugar cane per acre but not much

wheat. Conversely, the U.S. can produce large amounts of wheat per acre, but not much sugar cane. Clearly,

Brazil has a lower opportunity cost of producing sugar cane (in terms of wheat) than the U.S. The reverse is

also true: the U.S. has a lower opportunity cost of producing wheat than Brazil. We illustrate this by the PPFs of

the two countries in Figure 2.5.
38 2 • Choice in a World of Scarcity

FIGURE 2.5 Production Possibility Frontier for the U.S. and Brazil The U.S. PPF is flatter than the Brazil PPF implying

that the opportunity cost of wheat in terms of sugar cane is lower in the U.S. than in Brazil. Conversely, the
{"total_pages": 597, "creator": "PDFMiner", "title": "Principles of Microeconomics 3e", "file_type": ".pdf", "batch_upload": true, "creationdate": "2022-12-07T14:15:44-06:00", "moddate": "2022-12-07T14:23:05-06:00", "upload_timestamp": "2026-02-07T15:37:44.339247", "file_hash": "830b81f41611ac67a490444dbb5d6aed292224606965b06965b914443c93331a", "source": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "file_size_mb": 26.99, "source_file": "downloads\\business\\economics\\Microeconomics3e.pdf", "uploaded_via": "batch_uploader", "file_name": "Microeconomics3e.pdf", "producer": "Prince 14.2 (www.princexml.com)"}