The slopes of the production possibilities curves for each plant differ The steeper the curve, the greater the opportunity cost of an additional snowboard Here, the opportunity cost is lowest at Plant and greatest at Plant The exhibit gives the slopes of the production possibilities curves for each of the firm’s three plants The opportunity cost of an additional snowboard at each plant equals the absolute values of these slopes More generally, the absolute value of the slope of any production possibilities curve at any point gives the opportunity cost of an additional unit of the good on the horizontal axis, measured in terms of the number of units of the good on the vertical axis that must be forgone The greater the absolute value of the slope of the production possibilities curve, the greater the opportunity cost will be The plant for which the opportunity cost of an additional snowboard is greatest is the plant with the steepest production possibilities curve; the plant for which the opportunity cost is lowest is the plant with the flattest production possibilities curve The plant with the lowest opportunity cost of producing snowboards is Plant 3; its slope of −0.5 means that Ms Ryder must give up half a pair of skis in that plant to produce an additional snowboard In Plant 2, she must give up one pair of skis to gain one more snowboard We have already seen that an additional snowboard requires giving up two pairs of skis in Plant Comparative Advantage and the Production Possibilities Curve Attributed to Libby Rittenberg and Timothy Tregarthen Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books/ Saylor.org 69