The Invisible Hand

Answer choices

1. A

   Contradicted / Wrong Emphasis Too Strong: always3% picked this

   Mainstream economists have always assumed that returns to scale are generally increasing

   The central topic of this passage was not Mainstream economists, so that's strike 1. It's highly dangerous to say any big group has always assumed a certain idea, so that's strike 2. And the beginning of the 3rd paragraph says that, "for almost two centuries the assumption of diminishing returns dominated (mainstream) economic theory", which is the opposite of what this answer is saying. That's strike 3, but this isn't baseball. Every strike is an out. :)

   3%
2. B

   Too Narrow Is vs. Was16% picked this

   The functioning of the Invisible Hand is accepted primarily because diminishing returns can be described

   The passage was about Invisible Hand and Pin Factory; it was about diminishing returns and increasing returns. Our main point would seem lacking if it only mentioned one of those two. Also, the functioning of Invisible Hand was more emphasized because economists couldn't (until the 1970s) describe Pin Factory with enough mathematical rigor.

   16%
3. C

   Too Strong9% picked this

   Recent developments in mathematics have enabled the Pin Factory to be modeled even more rigorously

   Too Strong: even more rigorously Too Narrow This answer fails to capture the main themes that "Pin Factory and Invisible Hand are opposed to each other but only the latter was emphasized until recently". And what happened recently was that economists figured out in the 1970s (does that qualify as recent?) how to describe Pin Factory with "the rigor needed to make it respectable". The passage never compares rigor; we don't know which of Pin Factory or Invisible Hand can be modeled more rigorously.

   9%
4. D

   Wrong Emphasis: Adam Smith3% picked this

   Adam Smith was the first economist to understand how a market economy can enable individual self-interest to

   This answer fails to capture the main themes that "Pin Factory and Invisible Hand are opposed to each other but only the latter was emphasized until recently". Although Smith's book is what introduced Pin Factory and Invisible Hand into the economic lexicon, the passage is about those concepts, not about him.

   3%
5. E

   Correct69% picked this

   Economists have, until somewhat recently, failed to account for the increasing returns to scale common

   Why this is right

   Wow. This is their correct answer? Talk about "best available ? good". This answer is shockingly narrow for a correct answer, but it's better than the others. The author does pose a question, "Why have increasing returns been de-emphasized for the past two centuries?" And then the last two paragraphs provide an answer to this question: - it's not ideology; economists just couldn't figure out how to represent increasing returns mathematically - "increasing returns obviously characterized many enterprises, such as railroads" - Only since the late 1970s ("somewhat recently", in comparison to the previous 200 years) have economists been able to show the math behind it. This correct answer really teaches us that we're not going crazy if we end up having to pick a main point answer that feels surprisingly incomplete. This answer leaves out the entire discussion of how Invisible Hand and Pin Factory are opposing concepts.

   Skill tested: Main Point · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

   69%