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OG15 OG16
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Which of the following best completes the passage below?When the products of several competing suppliers are perceived by consumers to be essentially the same, classical economics predicts that price competition will reduce prices to the same minimal levels and all suppliers' profits to the same minimal levels. Therefore, if classical economics is true, and given suppliers' desire to make as much profit as possible, it should be expected that_____.
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OG12 OG15 OG16
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Installing scrubbers in smokestacks and switching to cleaner-burning fuel are the two methods available to Northern Power for reducing harmful emissions from its plants. Scrubbers will reduce harmful emissions more than cleaner-burning fuels will. Therefore, by installing scrubbers, Northern Power will be doing the most that can be done to reduce harmful emissions from its plants.Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
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OG12 OG16 OG15
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Some anthropologists study modern-day societies of foragers in an effort to learn about our ancient ancestors who were also foragers. A flaw in this strategy is that forager societies are extremely varied. Indeed, any forager society with which anthropologists are familiar has had considerable contact with modern, non-forager societies.Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the criticism made above of the anthropologists' strategy?
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OG12 OG15 OG16
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One variety of partially biodegradable plastic beverage container is manufactured from small bits of plastic bound together by a degradable bonding agent such as cornstarch. Since only the bonding agent degrades, leaving the small bits of plastic, no less plastic refuse per container is produced when such containers are discarded than when comparable nonbiodegradable containers are discarded.Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument above?
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OG12 OG15 OG16
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Most employees in the computer industry move from company to company, changing jobs several times in their careers. However, Summit Computers is known throughout the industry for retaining its employees. Summit credits its success in retaining employees to its informal, nonhierarchical work environment.Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports Summit's explanation of its success in retaining employees?
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OG12 OG15
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Red blood cells in which the malarial-fever parasite resides are eliminated from a person's body after 120 days. Because the parasite cannot travel to a new generation of red blood cells, any fever that develops in a person more than 120 days after that person has moved to a malaria-free region is not due to the malarial parasite.Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the conclusion above?
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OG12 OG15 PREP07 Test 2
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Neither a rising standard of living nor balanced trade, by itself, establishes a country's ability to compete in the international marketplace. Both are required simultaneously since standards of living can rise because of growing trade deficits and trade can be balanced by means of a decline in a country's standard of living.If the facts stated in the passage above are true, a proper test of a country's ability to be competitive is its ability to
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OG12 OG15 OG16 OG17 OG18 OG19 OG20 OG2022
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When there is less rainfall than normal, the water level of Australian rivers falls and the rivers flow more slowly. Because algae whose habitat is river water grow best in slow-moving water, the amount of algae per unit of water generally increases when there has been little rain. By contrast, however, following a period of extreme drought, algae levels are low even in very slow-moving river water.Which of the following, if true, does most to explain the contrast described above?
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OG12 OG15 OG16 OG17 GWD
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A prominent investor who holds a large stake in the Burton Tool Company has recently claimed that the company is mismanaged, citing as evidence the company's failure to slow production in response to a recent rise in its inventory of finished products. It is doubtful whether an investor's sniping at management can ever be anything other than counterproductive, but in this case it is clearly not justified. It is true that an increased inventory of finished products often indicates that production is outstripping demand, but in Burton's case it indicates no such thing. Rather, the increase in inventory is entirely attributable to products that have already been assigned to orders received from customers.In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?
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OG12 OG15 OG16
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To protect certain fledgling industries, the government of Country Z banned imports of the types of products those industries were starting to make. As a direct result, the cost of those products to the buyers, several export-dependent industries in Z, went up, sharply limiting the ability of those industries to compete effectively in their export markets.Which of the following conclusions about Country Z's adversely affected export-dependent industries is best supported by the passage?
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OG12
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The local board of education found that, because the current physics curriculum has little direct relevance to today's world, physics classes attracted few high school students. So to attract students to physics classes, the board proposed a curriculum that emphasizes principles of physics involved in producing and analyzing visual images.Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest reason to expect that the proposed curriculum will be successful in attracting students?
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OG12 OG15 OG16 OG17 OG18 OG19 OG20 OG2022
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Scientists have modified feed corn genetically, increasing its resistance to insect pests. Farmers who tried out the genetically modified corn last season applied less insecticide to their corn fields and still got yields comparable to those they would have gotten with ordinary corn. Ordinary corn seed, however, costs less, and what these farmers saved on insecticide rarely exceeded their extra costs for seed. Therefore, for most feed-corn farmers, switching to genetically modified seed would be unlikely to increase profits.Which of the following would it be most useful to know in order to evaluate the argument?
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OG12 PREP07 Test 1
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Roland: The alarming fact is that 90 percent of the people in this country now report that they know someone who is unemployed. Sharon: But a normal, moderate level of unemployment is 5 percent, with 1 out of 20 workers unemployed. So at any given time if a person knows approximately 50 workers, one or more will very likely be unemployed.Sharon's argument relies on the assumption that
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OG12 OG15 OG16 OG17 GWD
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Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of Morganville. Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store outside the central shopping district of a small town, within five years the town has experienced the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district.The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the community activist's reasoning?
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OG12 OG15 PREP07 Test 2
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In comparison to the standard typewriter keyboard, the EFCO keyboard, which places the most-used keys nearest the typist's strongest fingers, allows faster typing and results in less fatigue. Therefore, replacement of standard keyboards with the EFCO keyboard will result in an immediate reduction of typing costs.Which of the following, if true, would most weaken the conclusion drawn above?
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OG12 OG15 OG16 OG17
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Although the earliest surviving Greek inscriptions written in an alphabet date from the eighth century B.C., the fact that the text of these Greek inscriptions sometimes runs from right to left and sometimes from left to right indicates that the Greeks adopted alphabetic writing at least two centuries before these inscriptions were produced. After all, the Greeks learned alphabetic writing from the Phoenicians, and presumably, along with the alphabet, they also adopted the then-current Phoenician practice with respect to the direction of text. And although Phoenician writing was originally inconsistent in direction, by the eighth century B.C. Phoenician was consistently written from right to left and had been for about two centuries.In the argument given, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?
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OG12 OG15 PREP07 Test 2
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When demand for a factory's products is high, more money is spent at the factory for safety precautions and machinery maintenance than when demand is low. Thus the average number of on-the-job accidents per employee each month should be lower during periods when demand is high than when demand is low and less money is available for safety precautions and machinery maintenance.Which of the following, if true about a factory when demand for its products is high, casts the most serious doubt on the conclusion drawn above?
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OG12 OG15 OG16 OG17
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Businesses are suffering because of a lack of money available for development loans. To help businesses, the government plans to modify the income-tax structure in order to induce individual taxpayers to put a larger portion of their incomes into retirement savings accounts, because as more money is deposited in such accounts, more money becomes available to borrowers.Which of the following, if true, raises the most serious doubt regarding the effectiveness of the government's plan to increase the amount of money available for development loans for businesses?
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OG12 OG15 OG18 OG17 OG19 OG20 OG2022
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Since it has become known that several of a bank's top executives have been buying shares in their own bank, the bank's depositors, who had been worried by rumors that the bank faced impending financial collapse, have been greatly relieved. They reason that, since top executives evidently have faith in the bank`s financial soundness, those worrisome rumors must be false. Such reasoning might well be overoptimistic, however, since corporate executives have been known to buy shares in their own company in a calculated attempt to dispel negative rumors about the company's health.In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?
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OG12 OG15 OG16 OG17 OG18 OG19 OG20 OG2022
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A new law gives ownership of patents—documents providing exclusive right to make and sell an invention—to universities, not the government, when those patents result from government-sponsored university research. Administrators at Logos University plan to sell any patents they acquire to corporations in order to fund programs to improve undergraduate teaching.Which of the following, if true, would cast the most doubt on the viability of the college administrators' plan described above?
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