votes all his time to raising rice, he can produce twenty pounds of corn a month. He cannot, however, produce any cloth. Conversely, if Joe devotes all of his time to making cloth, he can produce five yards a month but will have no time for the rice crop. He can vote some of his time to rice and some to cloth but not more than ten hours total. Thus he can spend two hours a day producing rice and eight hours producing cloth, or any combination of hours equaling ten hours. This clearly illustrates the production possibility frontier as a boundary identifying what is obtainable and what is not. Calculate Joe’s PPF by using the information in Table 1. These calculations are summarized in Figure 1 and graphed as Joe’s PPF. To understand these calculations, first examine the data found in Figure 1. Possibility A shows an entire working day devoted solely to rice production. In this case 20 pounds of rice per month is the forecasted yield, while no cloth is produced. Possibility B demonstrates two hours daily in cloth production and eight hours producing rice, yielding a total of eighteen pounds of rice and one yard of cloth monthly. The pattern continues onto F, showing an entire working day devoted to cloth production. The work day is defined as two hour blocks of time in Table 1, however, any feasible allocation of a day hour work day will ________________________________________________________________________demonstrate the potential various combinations of rice and cloth along the line joining points A, B, C, D, E, and F. in Figure 1. This indicates the Production Possibility Frontier. Production can be maintained at any point on or within the attainable frontier - the area discerned as yellow inside Figure 1. Points outside that frontier are unattainable. To produce at points beyond the frontier, there would have to be more time allotted to the working day. A ten hour work day allows for various combinations of rice and clot...
