Japan s productivity has overtaken America s in some manufacturing industries, but el
A、take up
B、brought back
C、rested on
D、clung to
A、take up
B、brought back
C、rested on
D、clung to
第1题
Ironically, the first evidence for this idea appeared in the United States. Not long ago, with the country entering a recessing and Japan at its prebubble peak, the U.S. workforce was derided as poorly educated and one of the primary cause of the poor U.S. economic performance. Japan was, and remains, the global leader in automotiveassembly productivity. Yet the research revealed that the U.S. factories of Honda, Nissan, and Toyota achieved about 95 percent of the productivity of their Japanese counterparts—a result of the training that U.S. workers received on the job.
More recently, while examining housing construction, the researchers discovered that illiterate, non-English-speaking Mexican workers in Houston, Texas, consistently met best-practice labor productivity standards despite the complexity of the building industry’s work.
What is the real relationship between education and economic development? We have begun to suspect that continuing economic growth promotes the development of education even when governments don’t force it. After all, that’s how education got started. When our ancestors were hunters and gatherers 10,000 years ago, they didn’t have time to wonder much about anything besides finding food. Only when humanity began to get its food in a more productive way was there time for other things.
As education improved, humanity’s productivity potential increased as well. When the competitive environment pushed our ancestors to achieve that potential, they could in turn afford more education. This increasingly high level of education is probably a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the complex political systems required by advanced economic performance. Thus poor countries might not be able to escape their poverty traps without political changes that may be possible only with broader formal education. A lack of formal education, however, doesn’t constrain the ability of the developing world’s workforce to substantially improve productivity for the foreseeable future. On the contrary, constraints on improving productivity explain why education isn’t developing more quickly there than it is.
第31题:The author holds in paragraph 1 that the importance of education in poor countries
A.is subject to groundless doubts.
B.has fallen victim of bias.
C.is conventionally downgraded.
D.has been overestimated.
第2题
Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.
Movie directors sometimes shoot two endings to a film, undecided about which to use until the very last minute. In the Casablanca everyone knows, Ingrid Bergman leaves Humphrey Bogart, but in another ending Bogart got the girl.
In some ways, it feels like we're in the middle of a movie made by some deranged(疯狂的) economist, and we don't know yet if we're going to get the happy ending or the sad one. Does the rise of China and India supercharge(提高) global growth, or will all the new competition pull down wages in the industrialized world? Is this period going to be titled The Bright Dawn or The Big Squeeze?
Certainly for workers in the industrialized world, the latest Signs are troubling. Profits seem to be outpacing wages just about everywhere. As a result, from Japan to the US to Europe, labor is getting a smaller share of the economic pie. The numbers are pretty straightforward: In Japan, the share of national income going to workers dropped from 53.1% in 2001 to 51.1% in the year ending with the first quarter of 2005. In the U.S., the employee share of gross domestic income dropped from 58% to 56.8%. In Western Europe, workers' share of national income dropped from 51.7% in 2001 to 50.5% at the end of 2004, before bouncing up a bit in the latest quarter.
An obvious—and pessimistic—explanation for this broad decline is the intensification of global competition, forcing formerly privileged workers in advanced countries to accept a lower standard of living. Harvard economist Richard Freeman has argued that the entry of China, India, and the former Soviet countries into the global economy has effectively doubled the size of the world's workforce. As a result, labor is relatively abundant, capital is relatively scarce, the returns to labor go down, and the returns to capital go up.
"Having twice as many workers and newly the same amount of capital places great pressure on labor markets throughout the world," writes Freeman. That shifts the balance of power in markets toward capital, as more workers compete for working that capital.
This is the unhappy ending to the global economy story. However, the numbers are also consistent with another, much more upbeat(乐观的) ending. It could be that corporate restructuring efforts in Japan and Europe are finally taking hold, leading to higher profits and faster productivity growth, even as US companies continue their efforts to boost efficiency; And it could be that there's just a lag before the productivity gains get passed on to workers in the form. of higher wages.
So, will we get the happy ending or the sad ending? There's no way of telling yet—but hey, what fun is a movie with a predictable ending?
Similar to the story in the movie Casablanca, the world economy______.
A.is experiencing dramatic changes
B.is set in complicated political factors
C.involves fierce competition between different parties
D.is developing into two possible opposite directions
第3题
Businessmen place a high value on() (守时), so try not to be late for any business.
A、support
B、productivity
C、surprise
D、punctuality
第4题
A.invests at
B.invests in
C.invests by
D.invests with
第5题
A.The Japan’s Health Ministry
B.Japan’s health Ministry
C.A Japan’s health Ministry
D.Japan health Ministry
第6题
A.variety
B.change
C.diversification
D.diversity
第7题
第8题
A.The article doesn"t say.
B.It"s doing great.
C.Not very well.
D.Cannot see clearly.
第9题
A.sea
B.island
C.Pearl Harbor
D.US
第10题
Faulkner's research findings are based on_____.
A.a survey of farmers in northern Japan
B.tests performed on a thousand old people
C.the study of brain volumes of different people
D.the latest development of computer technology