PrepTest 133, Section 3, Question 7
Economic growth accelerates business demand for the development(37 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- ABusinesses supplying new(15 more words not shown)
- BBusinesses that supply(9 more words not shown)
- CThe development of(8 more words not shown)
- DBusinesses that adopt(14 more words not shown)
- EEconomic growth increases(2 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Lots of customers and only a few suppliers sounds like a good position for a business. If economic growth makes more companies eager to buy new technology, I can see why the companies selling it might expect to benefit.
Then comes the catch: faster technological change can also make suppliers fail. Strong demand doesn't guarantee that every business serving that demand succeeds.
Why might that happen? Perhaps a technology is hard to fit into existing work, or a changing market produces new winners and losers. Those are possible explanations to investigate, not facts the passage gives us. We might expect a question asking us to resolve that tension, but this one asks what the information supports.
What we’re looking for
So keep the conclusion modest. Even businesses supplying the technology may fail to benefit from economic growth. We don't need to identify the reason for each failure or decide which type of business usually performs best.
Working the answers
- A
We haven't compared technology suppliers with other businesses. Oil companies, banks, or some other group could do better or worse during the same period; the passage doesn't rank them. Having many potential customers doesn't establish that technology suppliers are more likely to prosper than other companies.
- BCorrect
Growth increases demand for new technology, but the resulting acceleration of technological change can still bring trouble for the suppliers themselves. So supplying these technologies isn't a guarantee of benefiting from growth. The cautious “may not always” fits the passage's warning that these businesses can fail.
- C
The passage gives us growth leading to increased demand for technology. C sends the connection the other way, making technology development a possible cause of growth. That might happen, but it isn't established just by knowing that growth increases demand. Don't swap the cause and the response.
- D
We know that buyers of new technology can fail too. We aren't told when they are most likely to prosper, or how their prospects during growth compare with their prospects in other conditions. A possibility of failure doesn't supply that ranking of favorable conditions.
- E
Some failures during growth don't establish an increase in failures. How many businesses would have failed without that growth? We aren't told. The passage says technological change can cause failures; it doesn't compare the overall number before and after growth. B needs only the limited possibility of not benefiting, while E needs a broader comparison.
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