The list of famous companies founded during economic downturns is long and varied. A 2009 study found that over half of Fortune

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问题    The list of famous companies founded during economic downturns is long and varied. A 2009 study found that over half of Fortune 500 companies got their start during a downturn or a bear market. A recession, it seems, may not be an entirely bad time to start a company. Indeed, busts (and booms) cast a longer shadow on the business landscape than is commonly realised, because they influence both the rate of business formation and how existing firms are run.
   Some argue that recessions speed up the process of economic restructuring—what Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction" . The destruction part is easy to see: downturns kill businesses, leaving boarded-up windows on the high street as their gravestones. But recessions may also spur the creation of new businesses.
   When people suddenly have less money to spend, clever entrepreneurs may see an opportunity to set up businesses that give them what they want more cheaply or efficiently. Downturns may also swell the ranks of potential firm creators, because many who might otherwise have sought a
   stable salary will reinvent themselves as entrepreneurs.
   Tough times do not suddenly prompt everyone to start a business. The vast majority of people who reach working age during a downturn still look for a job. But research also suggests that recessions have lasting effects on how executives manage businesses. Antoinette Schoar and Luo Zuo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that those who began their management careers during a bust were substantially more risk-averse, took on less debt and generally were more conservative managers than the rest of the sample, even many decades later. That will strike critics of the over-leveraged company as thoroughly good news, but it is hard to say whether this effect is entirely benign.
   Bosses whose careers began in a recession also tend to be so concerned about cost-effectiveness that the companies they go on to run spend less on research and development. They may thus be too conservative: firms with bosses whose professional baptism came in a weak economy have lower returns on assets than those run by other managers. Why should this be? One plausible explanation is that recessions affect the way people take decisions.
   Whether they were set up during a boom or a bust, today’s firms are deeply affected by the economic fluctuations of the past.
   
Recessions may spur the creation of new businesses probably because_____.

选项 A、they decrease the number of potential competitors
B、they decrease the number of potential employees
C、they increase the number of clever firm creators
D、they increase the number of potential entrepreneurs

答案D

解析 细节题。根据题干定位到第二段最后一句。这是启下性质的句子,因此答案可从第三段找。本段指出经济衰退刺激新企业诞生有两方面的原因:一是人们可支配的收入减少,因此聪明的企业家会抓住这个机会兴办企业,生产更便宜更有效的商品;二是经济衰退可能扩大潜在创业者的规模。纵观四个选项,只有D项“它们(经济衰退)增加了潜在企业家的数量”为正确答案,increase,number,entrepreneurs分别是原文swell,rank,firm creator的同义复现。
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