CAT 2024 SLOT 1 - VARC
Q1ā10 of 24There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: Comprehending a wide range of emotions, Renaissance music nevertheless portrayed all emotions in a balanced and moderate fashion.
Paragraph: A volume of translated Italian madrigals were published in London during the year of 1588. This sudden public interest facilitated a surge of English Madrigal writing as well as a spurt of other secular music writing and publication. ___(1)___. This music boom lasted for thirty years and was as much a golden age of music as British literature was with Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I. ___(2)___. The rebirth in both literature and music originated in Italy and migrated to England; the English madrigal became more humorous and lighter in England as compared to Italy. Renaissance music was mostly polyphonic in texture. ___(3)___. Extreme use of and contrasts in dynamics, rhythm, and tone colour do not occur. ___(4)___. The rhythms in Renaissance music tend to have a smooth, soft flow instead of a sharp, well-defined pulse of accents.
The missing sentence describes the nature of Renaissance music, so we have to look for the blank that relates to this idea.
The paragraph begins by describing how public interest in music bloomed during the Renaissance. Blank 1 is placed between two sentences that are tightly linked, as both relate to the music boom seen during the said period. So, blank 1 is ruled out.
Blank 2, too, is placed between two sentences that relate to history and are logically connected. So, blank 2 is out.
Now, the sentence before blank 3 describes the nature of Renaissance music- it was mostly polyphonic in nature. The sentence after 3 also describes how the music was. So, blank 3 is a good fit for the missing sentence.
Moving on, we see that blank 4 is also between two sentences that describe Renaissance music. But looking at the tenses of the sentences before and after blank 4, we see that these are in the simple present tense while the missing sentence is in the past tense (same as the sentence before blank 3). So, the missing sentence fits better in blank 3 than 4.
Hence, the answer is 'Option 3'
Choice D is the correct answer.
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Cartographers design and create maps to communicate information about phenomena located somewhere on our planet. In the past, cartographers did not worry too much about who was going to read their maps. Although some simple "usability" research was doneālike comparing whether circle or bar symbols worked bestācartographers knew how to make maps. This has changed now, however, due to all kinds of societal and technological developments. Today, map readers are more demandingāmostly because of the tools they use to read maps. Cartographers, who are also influenced by these trends, are now more interested in seeing if their products are efficient, effective, and appreciated.
The main idea of the paragraph is that while cartographers in the past did not worry too much about map readers, the cartographers of today are influenced by societal and technological developments which have made map readers more demanding.
Options 2 and 4 are easily eliminated. The paragraph does not say map readers use a series of experiments to evaluate maps, nor does it say map readers have become demanding as maps are being used for a variety of reasons.
Options 1 and 3, however, look close. Of these, 3 is better than 1. Option 1 simply says cartographers have been prompted by new technological developments to experiment with their maps. Option 3, on the other hand, touches upon the idea of usability of maps-- the fact that map users/readers have influenced the work of cartographers. So, 3 is the better choice.
Hence, the answer is 'Today, cartographers also need to look into the usability of maps because of the new technological developments.'
Choice C is the correct answer.
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
4 is the opening sentence of the paragraph, as it is a general statement describing what the paragraph is about. 4 introduces Singer's Animal Liberation text. 2 explain Singer's view. So, 2 follows 4. We see that 3, too, relates to Singer's views on extending moral consideration to animals. So, 3 follows 2. Singer argues that animals deserve direct moral consideration as, just like humans, they have certain significant interests. Now, between 1 and 5, we see that 5 makes better sense after 3 than 1 as 5, too, is about animal and human interests and it ties in with Singer's idea of humans having direct moral duties towards animals. 5 is a good concluding sentence. On the other hand, we see that option 3 says animals have 'certain significant interests' whereas 1 blandly states only two specific interests of animals while not relating this to humans having 'direct' moral duties towards animals.
Hence, the answer is 'Animals have an interest in fulfilling their basic needs, but also in avoiding suffering, and thus we ought to extend moral consideration.'
Choice A is the correct answer.
(COMMON INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS 4 TO 7)
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the "zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump.
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra ratāthe smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicootāexhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western coast.
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world's most mercurial rainfall patternsārelentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.
They have a new nicknameāa flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," Pedler says.
Q.Ā Ā According to the text, the western barred bandicoots now have a flattering name because they have
The western barred bandicoots have earned a new nickname due to their constant digging aiding the desert restore itself: āWith their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself. They have a new nicknameāa flattering one, this time.ā So, option 3 is the correct choice.
The question is " According to the text, the western barred bandicoots now have a flattering name because they have"
Hence, the answer is 'aided in altering an arid environment.'
Choice C is the correct answer.
(COMMON INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS 4 TO 7)
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the "zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump.
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra ratāthe smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicootāexhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western coast.
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world's most mercurial rainfall patternsārelentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.
They have a new nicknameāa flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," Pedler says.
Q.Ā Ā Which one of the following options does NOT represent the characteristics of the western barred bandicoot?
Tricky question. Note the terms/phrases used to describe the western barred bandicoot: 'small-bodied', 'slender-snooted', 'muzzle, which is much too long', 'black-striped rump', 'the smallest bandicoot', 'breath-mint-size babies', 'backward-facing pouch', 'mothers..forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters'.
Options 1, 2 and 3 are all true based on the given description. Option 4, on the other hand, says the western barred bandicoot 'uses camouflage' and digs. This is not what the passage says. The passage says the western barred bandicoot digs camouflaged shelters, not that it uses camouflage and digs. So, option 4 does not represent the characteristics of the western barred bandicoot.
The question is " Which one of the following options does NOT represent the characteristics of the western barred bandicoot?"
Hence, the answer is 'Smallest black striped marsupial that uses camouflage and dig'
Choice D is the correct answer.
(COMMON INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS 4 TO 7)
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the "zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump.
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra ratāthe smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicootāexhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western coast.
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world's most mercurial rainfall patternsārelentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.
They have a new nicknameāa flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," Pedler says.
Q.Ā Ā The text uses the word 'exclosures' because Wild Deserts has adopted a measure of
Again, a tricky question as two options are close. The passage says that 20 Shark Bay bandicoots have been imported to a preserve on the edge of the desert where they occupy two fenced exclosures cleared of invasive rabbits and of feral cats.
While option 1 is easily eliminated and option 3 ruled out as it talks of the 'main' desert being rid of certain animals, options 2 and 4 look close. But of these, 4 is more precise, as it contains the keyword mentioned in the passage- the exclosures have been cleared of 'invasive' species. Option 2 is incorrect as the islands are not predator-free as such, it is only the two fenced exclosures that have been rid of invasive rabbits and feral cats. A third fenced area in the island contains cats. So, option 2 is incorrect.
The question is "The text uses the word 'exclosures' because Wild Deserts has adopted a measure of"
Hence, the answer is 'barring the entry of invasive species.'
Choice D is the correct answer.
(COMMON INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS 4 TO 7)
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Landing in Australia, the British colonists weren't much impressed with the small-bodied, slender-snooted marsupials called bandicoots. "Their muzzle, which is much too long, gives them an air exceedingly stupid," one naturalist noted in 1805. They nicknamed one type the "zebra rat" because of its black-striped rump.
Silly-looking or not, though, the zebra ratāthe smallest bandicoot, more commonly known today as the western barred bandicootāexhibited a genius for survival in the harsh outback, where its ancestors had persisted for some 26 million years. Its births were triggered by rainfall in the bone-dry desert. It carried its breath-mint-size babies in a backward-facing pouch so mothers could forage for food and dig shallow, camouflaged shelters.
Still, these adaptations did not prepare the western barred bandicoot for the colonial-era transformation of its ecosystem, particularly the onslaught of imported British animals, from cattle and rabbits that damaged delicate desert vegetation to ravenous house cats that soon developed a taste for bandicoots. Several of the dozen-odd bandicoot species went extinct, and by the 1940s the western barred bandicoot, whose original range stretched across much of the continent, persisted only on two predator-free islands in Shark Bay, off Australia's western coast.
"Our isolated fauna had simply not been exposed to these predators," says Reece Pedler, an ecologist with the Wild Deserts conservation program.
Now Wild Deserts is using descendants of those few thousand island survivors, called Shark Bay bandicoots, in a new effort to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. They've imported 20 bandicoots to a preserve on the edge of the Strzelecki Desert, in the remote interior of New South Wales. This sanctuary is a challenging place, desolate much of the year, with one of the world's most mercurial rainfall patternsārelentless droughts followed by sudden drenching floods.
The imported bandicoots occupy two fenced "exclosures," cleared of invasive rabbits (courtesy of Pedler's sheepdog) and of feral cats (which slunk off once the rabbits disappeared). A third fenced area contains the program's Wild Training Zone, where two other rare marsupials (bilbies, a larger type of bandicoot, and mulgaras, a somewhat fearsome fuzzball known for sucking the brains out of prey) currently share terrain with controlled numbers of cats, learning to evade them. It's unclear whether the Shark Bay bandicoots, which are perhaps even more predator-naive than their now-extinct mainland bandicoot kin, will be able to make that kind of breakthrough.
For now, though, a recent surge of rainfall has led to a bandicoot joey boom, raising the Wild Deserts population to about 100, with other sanctuaries adding to that number. There are also signs of rebirth in the landscape itself. With their constant digging, the bandicoots trap moisture and allow for seed germination so the cattle-damaged desert can restore itself.
They have a new nicknameāa flattering one, this time. "We call them ecosystem engineers," Pedler says.
Q.Ā Ā Which one of the following statements provides a gist of this passage?
The passage describes how the colonial-era transformation of the ecosystem led to the dwindling of the western barred bandicoot and the effort by Wild Deserts to seed a mainland bandicoot revival. Option 2 is a good summary of what the passage is about. None of the other options talk about the revival effort, so they are easily ruled out.
The question is "Which one of the following statements provides a gist of this passage? "
Hence, the answer is 'A type of bandicoots was nearly wiped out by invasive species but rescuers now pin hopes on a remnant island population.'
Choice B is the correct answer.
There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.
Sentence: The brain isn't organized the way you might set up your home office or bathroom medicine cabinet.
Paragraph: ___(1)___. You can't just put things anywhere you want to. The evolved architecture of the brain is haphazard and disjointed, and incorporates multiple systems, each of which has a mind of its own. ___(2)___. Evolution doesn't design things and it doesn't build systemsāit settles on systems that, historically, conveyed a survival benefit. There is no overarching, grand planner engineering the systems so that they work harmoniously together. ___(3)___. The brain is more like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction. ___(4)___.
Easy question. The missing sentence says the brain is not organized on the lines of a home office or bathroom medicine cabinet. The line that follows blank 1 explains why the analogy does not work. Unlike a home office or cabinet, in the brain, you can't put things anywhere you want to. Blank 1 is a good fit for the missing sentence.
Further, we see that the paragraph cannot begin with the line 'You canāt just put things anywhere you want to' as it is about the brain and not about organizing things. So, blank 1 is the correct choice; there is no need to rule out other options.
Hence, the answer is 'Option 1'
Choice A is the correct answer.
(COMMON INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS 9 TO 12)
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Oftentimes, when economists cross borders, they are less interested in learning from others than in invading their garden plots. Gary Becker, for instance, pioneered the idea of human capital. To do so, he famously tackled topics like crime and domesticity, applying methods honed in the study of markets to domains of nonmarket life. He projected economics outward into new realms: for example, by revealing the extent to which humans calculate marginal utilities when choosing their spouses or stealing from neighbors. At the same time, he did not let other ways of thinking enter his own economic realm: for example, he did not borrow from anthropology or history or let observations of nonmarket economics inform his homo economicus. Becker was a picture of the imperial economist in the heyday of the discipline's bravura.
Times have changed for the once almighty discipline. Economics has been taken to task, within and beyond its ramparts. Some economists have reached out, imported, borrowed, and collaboratedābeen less imperial, more open. Consider Thomas Piketty and his outreach to historians. The booming field of behavioral economicsāthe fusion of economics and social psychologyāis another case. Having spawned active subfields, like judgment, decision-making and a turn to experimentation, the field aims to go beyond the caricature of Rational Man to explain how humans make decisionsā¦.
It is important to underscore how this flips the way we think about economics. For generations, economists have presumed that people have interestsā"preferences," in the neoclassical argotāthat get revealed in the course of peoples' choices. Interests come before actions and determine them. If you are hungry, you buy lunch; if you are cold, you get a sweater. If you only have so much money and can't afford to deal with both your growling stomach and your shivering, which need you choose to meet using your scarce savings reveals your preference.
Psychologists take one look at this simple formulation and shake their heads. Increasingly, even some mainstream economists have to admit that homo economicus doesn't always behave like the textbook maximizer; irrational behavior can't simply be waved away as extra-economic expressions of passions over interests, and thus the domain of other disciplinesā¦. This is one place where the humanist can help the economist. If narrative economics is going to help us understand how rivals duke it out, who wins and who loses, we are going to need much more than lessons from epidemiological studies of viruses or intracranial stimuli.
Above all, we need politics and institutions. Shiller [the Nobel prize winning economist] connects perceptions of narratives to changes in behavior and thence to social outcomes. He completes a circle that was key to behavioral economics and brings in storytelling to make sense of how perceptions get framed. This cycle (perception to behavior to society) was once mediated or dominated by institutions: the political parties, lobby groups, and media organizations that played a vital role in legitimating, representing, and excluding interests. Yet institutions have been stripped from Shiller's account, to reveal a bare dynamic of emotions and economics, without the intermediating place of politics.
Q.Ā Ā In the first paragraph the author is making the point that economists like Becker
Of Becker, the passage says that he āprojected economics outward into new realms: for example, by revealing the extent to which humans calculate marginal utilities when choosing their spouses or stealing from neighbors. At the same time, he did not let other ways of thinking enter his own economic realm: for example, he did not borrow from anthropology or history or let observations of nonmarket economics inform his homo economicus." Option 3 is the correct choice.
The question is " In the first paragraph the author is making the point that economists like Becker: "
Hence, the answer is 'used economics to analyse non-market behaviour, without incorporating perspectives from other areas of inquiry.'
Choice C is the correct answer.
(COMMON INFORMATION FOR QUESTIONS 9 TO 12)
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Oftentimes, when economists cross borders, they are less interested in learning from others than in invading their garden plots. Gary Becker, for instance, pioneered the idea of human capital. To do so, he famously tackled topics like crime and domesticity, applying methods honed in the study of markets to domains of nonmarket life. He projected economics outward into new realms: for example, by revealing the extent to which humans calculate marginal utilities when choosing their spouses or stealing from neighbors. At the same time, he did not let other ways of thinking enter his own economic realm: for example, he did not borrow from anthropology or history or let observations of nonmarket economics inform his homo economicus. Becker was a picture of the imperial economist in the heyday of the discipline's bravura.
Times have changed for the once almighty discipline. Economics has been taken to task, within and beyond its ramparts. Some economists have reached out, imported, borrowed, and collaboratedābeen less imperial, more open. Consider Thomas Piketty and his outreach to historians. The booming field of behavioral economicsāthe fusion of economics and social psychologyāis another case. Having spawned active subfields, like judgment, decision-making and a turn to experimentation, the field aims to go beyond the caricature of Rational Man to explain how humans make decisionsā¦.
It is important to underscore how this flips the way we think about economics. For generations, economists have presumed that people have interestsā"preferences," in the neoclassical argotāthat get revealed in the course of peoples' choices. Interests come before actions and determine them. If you are hungry, you buy lunch; if you are cold, you get a sweater. If you only have so much money and can't afford to deal with both your growling stomach and your shivering, which need you choose to meet using your scarce savings reveals your preference.
Psychologists take one look at this simple formulation and shake their heads. Increasingly, even some mainstream economists have to admit that homo economicus doesn't always behave like the textbook maximizer; irrational behavior can't simply be waved away as extra-economic expressions of passions over interests, and thus the domain of other disciplinesā¦. This is one place where the humanist can help the economist. If narrative economics is going to help us understand how rivals duke it out, who wins and who loses, we are going to need much more than lessons from epidemiological studies of viruses or intracranial stimuli.
Above all, we need politics and institutions. Shiller [the Nobel prize winning economist] connects perceptions of narratives to changes in behavior and thence to social outcomes. He completes a circle that was key to behavioral economics and brings in storytelling to make sense of how perceptions get framed. This cycle (perception to behavior to society) was once mediated or dominated by institutions: the political parties, lobby groups, and media organizations that played a vital role in legitimating, representing, and excluding interests. Yet institutions have been stripped from Shiller's account, to reveal a bare dynamic of emotions and economics, without the intermediating place of politics.
Q.Ā "Times have changed for the once almighty discipline." We can infer from this statement and the associated paragraph that the author is being
In the first paragraph, the author talks of 'imperial' economists 'invading' nonmarket realms while not letting in other ways of thinking enter their own field. Then he remarks that times have changed for 'the once almighty' discipline'. Clearly, the author is being sarcastic while explaining how economists have, with time, been forced to incorporate other disciplines in their analyses. Option 2 is the correct choice.
Option 1 is easily ruled out; the author is not being disparaging of economistsā inability to precisely predict market behaviour. Option 3 is the exact opposite of the author's stand. Option 4 is not related to the author's point.
The question is " "Times have changed for the once almighty discipline." We can infer from this statement and the associated paragraph that the author is being "
Hence, the answer is 'sarcastic about how economists, who earlier shunned other disciplines, are now beginning to incorporate them in their analyses.'
Choice B is the correct answer.