Comparative advantage Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Comparative advantage - Essay Example rative advantage theory is one of the most important concepts in the theory of international trade and is first mentioned by Adam Smith in his book ‘The Wealth of Nations’. He implied that it is better to buy a commodity from another country if it would cost less than manufacturing it locally, giving the buyer some advantage. According to Deardorff (2005), David Ricardo formulated the law or model of comparative advantage. The ‘Ricardian model’ was formalized through a simple but compelling numerical example investigating in detail the relative/alternative opportunity as well as advantages, which involved Portugal and England. This was outlined in his book ‘On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation’ published in 1817. Portugal has potential in cloth and wine production using less labor as compared to producing the same amounts in England. Remarkably, production’s relative costs for the two commodities differ in both countries. Wine production is difficult in England but cloth production more viable. Portugal has ease of production for both commodities. Portugal can produce excess wine and trade it for English cloth. The cost of cloth in England is covered by the cheaper price at which, England obtains wine from Portugal. The conclusion here is that each country stands to benefit through specialization in the good over which, it has comparative advantage by trading it for the other. Arnaud Costinot (2009) proposes a simple theory to relate to the origins of comparative advantage through international trade where endogenous productivity differs across countries. His core analysis is in determinants of division of labor. Considering a world economy that is composed of two countries that have a continuum of goods as well as a single production factor, which is labor, he asserts that complexity characterizes each good. This complexity in short is the number of tasks to be performed for production of a single unit. Performance of every task

Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) - Essay Example Clinical Decision Support Systems are "active knowledge systems which use two or more items of patient data to generate case-specific advice" (Wyatt J, Spiegelhalter D, 1991). Some successful systems such as 'Dxplain' and 'QMR' originating in the 1980s were successfully commercialized. There are compelling evidences for the effectiveness of CDSS for improved patient safety and improved quality of care. CDSS has been portrayed in a positive light by majority of reviews. The basic components of a CDSS include a medical knowledge base and an inference mechanism. It could be based on Expert systems or artificial neural networks or both. The computing techniques that are used to create CDSS are divided in two broad categories: For a clinically useful CDSS, the knowledge system should be based on best evidence and it should fully cover the problem. Also, it requires the capability to update the knowledge base. The system should be easy to use and its performance should be validated rigorously. A medical practitioner needs to deal with different kinds of data and knowledge and no single DSS model has the ability to manage all of them. In any advanced DSS model, data and knowledge are complementary; both are useful to take an appropriate decision in a complex domain like medicine. Due to heavy investme