单选题 .  Section A Multiple-Choice Questions
    Passage 1
    An extreme cold spell might be unwelcome to much of the Northern Hemisphere, but it is warmly welcomed by one group—the oil exporters. They have enjoyed a steady rise in the price of a barrel of crude and their satisfaction at the state of affairs is evidenced by the lack of any comment from OPEC nations in recent weeks.
    Demand for heating oil, a lead indicator from December to February, is high in Europe, in America's eastern states and in China. In response to the cold weather, Brent Crude futures have risen by $10 per barrel since the middle of December, to $81 per barrel.
    The oil futures market is in sharp contango—a term used to describe a market where oil is more expensive for delivery at future dates. In other words, market players are betting that the price will rise.
    Expectations of economic recovery are an explanation for the rising price contango, but some analysts worry that the underlying market fundamentals are not that bullish for oil. The Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES) points to the huge stocks of oil, as much as 100 millon barrels, put in storage when demand collapsed at the end of 2008. The CGES reckons that such a harsh winter warrants a much higher oil price. Because underlying demand is weak in a slow economic recovery, the price response has been weak.
    The oil price collapsed a year ago to $36 per barrel, a level at which most OPEC nations were facing hardship as the economic rent from exporting crude fell below budgeted government expenditure.
    For green energy technologies, such as biofuels made from plant waste, high prices are critical. In the absence of punishing carbon taxes or a very high carbon price in Europe's emissions trading system, investors in green technology need an oil price signal that compels the switch to alternatives. The signal was very loud in July 2008, when Brent reached $147 per barrel, but it was also unsustainable as the soaring price of oil was destroying demand and undermining economic growth.
    World demand for oil is still very weak. It fell throughout 2008 and began to recover only in the third quarter of last year. Global demand is 1.8 million barrels a day below its level two years ago. OPEC is more or less maintaining its cartel discipline in the face of rising prices, but non-OPEC producers are raising their output, adding 570,000 daily barrels to the market last year.
    Passage 2
    Over the past decade, there has been a sea change in China's economic policies. Like other developing countries which are attempting to become more export- orientated, China has started to set up free trade zones. These zones are called "Special Economic Zones" (SEZ's) and feature various incentives designed to encourage foreign investment. What is the significance of these zones? Have they really played an important role in the development of the economy of China? I will discuss these questions below.
    Historically, China has adopted an inward-looking strategy to its economic development. Successive Chinese governments thought that the economy could grow purely through self-reliance (Jao & Leung 1996). However, there are always limitations to what a country can do by itself, for example, limitations in raw-materials, natural resources, technology, etc. These can hold back the growth of an economy and certainly China's economic growth lagged far behind much of the rest of the world up to the 1970's.
    By contrast, countries like the USA were achieving significant economic growth in this period because they were practicing foreign trade policies which facilitated free trade (Crane 1990). Any shortages in the domestic economy, for example, oil in the USA or Japan, wheat in the Soviet Union" or cars in India could be compensated for by imports. Foreign trade, then, could help to aid economic growth.
    The export trade is also vital. Not only can exports be a means of paying for imports, but they also help to earn foreign exchange. Since 1979, the Chinese government has recognized the importance of exports as a means of fostering economic growth. Economic policies and special incentive programmes have been introduced to increase exports. One measure taken was the opening of the five special economic zones. They were Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou in Guangdong province, Xiamen in Fujian province and Hainan Island. In order to attract foreign investors and develop foreign trade, the five SEZ's offer similar packages of favourable incentives to foreign firms. One of the most attractive points of these packages is that income tax is fixed at the rate of 15 per cent, lower than that in other parts of China. Other advantages such as tax exemptions, land use rights, and banking and finance privileges are not available to firms operating outside the SEZ's.
    Many other non-financial advantages are provided inside the SEZ's. Firms are provided relatively free-market environments with minimal government intervention. This means that private and joint-venture enterprises are free to hire their own workers. They are also free to set wages to reflect market conditions. Bonuses can be awarded to workers for outstanding performance.
    After thirty years, it has been clear that the favourable impact of the SEZ's on the economy of China is fivefold: They attract foreign investment, they help the growth of the export industry, they earn foreign exchange, they provide employment opportunities and lastly they help the indigenous economy improve its level of technology.
    Passage 3
    Neoclassical economics is built on the assumption that humans are rational beings who have a clear idea of their best interests and strive to extract maximum benefit (or "utility", in economist-speak) from any situation. Neoclassical economics assumes that the process of decision-making is rational. But that contradicts growing evidence that decision-making draws on the emotions—even when reason is clearly involved.
    The role of emotions in decisions makes perfect sense. For situations met frequently in the past, such as obtaining food and mates, and confronting or fleeing from threats, the neural mechanisms required to weigh up the pros and cons will have been honed by evolution to produce an optimal outcome. Since emotion is the mechanism by which animals are prodded towards such outcomes, evolutionary and economic theory predict the same practical consequences for utility in these cases. But does this still apply when the ancestral machinery has to respond to the stimuli of urban modernity?
    One of the people who thinks that it does not is George Loewenstein, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. In particular, he suspects that modem shopping has subverted the decision-making machinery in a way that encourages people to run up debt. To prove the point he has teamed up with two psychologists, Brian Knutson of Stanford University and Drazen Prelec of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to look at what happens in the brain when it is deciding what to buy.
    In a study, the three researchers asked 26 volunteers to decide whether to buy a series of products such as a box of chocolates or a DVD of the television show that were flashed on a computer screen one after another. In each round of the task, the researchers first presented the product and then its price, with each step lasting four seconds. In the final stage, which also lasted four seconds, they asked the volunteers to make up their minds. While the volunteers were taking part in the experiment, the researchers scanned their brains using a technique called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI). This measures blood flow and oxygen consumption in the brain, as an indication of its activity.
    The researchers found that different parts of the brain were involved at different stages of the test. The nucleus accumbens was the most active part when a product was being displayed. Moreover, the level of its activity correlated with the reported desirability of the product in question.
    When the price appeared, however, FMRI reported more activity in other parts of the brain. Excessively high prices increased activity in the insular cortex, a brain region linked to expectations of pain, monetary loss and the viewing of upsetting pictures. The researchers also found greater activity in this region of the brain when the subject decided not to purchase an item.
    Price information activated the medial prefrontal cortex, too. This part of the brain is involved in rational calculation. In the experiment its activity seemed to correlate with a volunteer's reaction to both product and price, rather than to price alone. Thus, the sense of a good bargain evoked higher activity levels in the medial prefrontal cortex, and this often preceded a decision to buy.
    People's shopping behaviour therefore seems to have piggy-backed on old neural circuits evolved for anticipation of reward and the avoidance of hazards. What Dr. Loewenstein found interesting was the separation of the assessment of the product (which seems to be associated with the nucleus accumbens) from the assessment of its price (associated with the insular cortex), even though the two are then synthesised in the prefrontal cortex. His hypothesis is that rather than weighing the present good against future alternatives, as orthodox economics suggests, people actually balance the immediate pleasure of the prospective possession of a product with the immediate pain of paying for it.
    That makes perfect sense as an evolved mechanism for trading. If one useful object is being traded for another (hard cash in modem time), the future utility of what is being given up is embedded in the object being traded. Emotion is as capable of assigning such a value as reason. Buying on credit, though, may be different. The abstract nature of credit cards, coupled with the deferment of payment that they promise, may modulate the "con" side of the calculation in favour of the "pro".
    Whether it actually does so will be the subject of further experiments that the three researchers are now designing. These will test whether people with distinctly different spending behaviour, such as miserliness and extravagance, experience different amounts of pain in response to prices. They will also assess whether, in the same individuals, buying with credit cards eases the pain compared with paying by cash. If they find that it does, then credit cards may have to join the list of things such as fatty and sugary foods, and recreational drugs, that subvert human instincts in ways that seem pleasurable at the time but can have a long and malign aftertaste.1.  Investors in green technology would like to see ______.(Passage 1)