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  3. Economic theory suggests that regional inequalities should diminish as poorer places attract investment and grow faster than ric

Economic theory suggests that regional inequalities should diminish as poorer places attract investment and grow faster than ric

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问题     Economic theory suggests that regional inequalities should diminish as poorer places attract investment and grow faster than richer ones. The 20th century bore that theory out: income gaps narrowed across American states. No longer. Affluent places are now pulling away from poorer ones. This geographical divergence has dramatic consequences. Opportunities are limited for those stuck in the wrong place, and the wider economy suffers. If all its citizens had lived in places of high productivity over the past 50 years, America’s economy could have grown twice as fast as it did.
    Divergence is the result of big forces. In the modern economy scale is increasingly important. The social network that everyone else is on is most attractive to new users; the stock exchange with the deepest pool of investors is best for raising capital. These returns to scale create fewer, superstar firms clustered in fewer, superstar places. Everywhere else is left behind.
    Even as regional disparities widen, people are becoming less mobile. Demographic shifts help explain this. But the bigger culprit is poor policies. Soaring housing costs in prosperous cities keep newcomers out. In America the spread of state-specific occupational licensing and government benefits punishes those who move. The pension of a teacher who stays in the same state could be twice as big as that of a teacher who moves mid-career. Perversely, policies to help the poor unintentionally exacerbate the plight of left-behind places. Unemployment and health benefits enable the least employable people to survive in struggling places when once they would have had no choice but to move. Welfare makes capitalism less brutal for individuals, but it perpetuates the problems where they live.
    What to do? One answer is to help people move. Thriving places could do more to build the housing and infrastructure to accommodate newcomers. Accelerating the mutual recognition of credentials across state borders would help people move to where they can be most productive. But greater mobility also has a perverse side-effect. By draining poor places of talented workers, it exacerbates their troubles. The local tax-base erodes as productive workers leave, even as welfare and pension obligations mount.
    To avoid these outcomes, politicians have long tried to bolster left-behind places with subsidies. But such "regional policies" have a patchy record, at best. Better for politicians to focus on speeding up the diffusion of technology and business practices from high-performing places. A beefed-up competition policy could reduce industrial concentration, which saps the economy of dynamism while focusing the gains from growth in fewer firms and places. Fostering clusters by encouraging the creation of private investment funds targeted on particular regions might help.
    Perhaps most of all, politicians need a different mindset. For progressives, alleviating poverty has demanded welfare; for libertarians, freeing up the economy. Both have focused on people. But the complex interaction of demography, welfare and globalisation means that is insufficient. Easing the anger of the left-behind means realising that places matter, too.
The social network and the stock exchange are mentioned to indicate that________.
选项 A、scale economy contributes to regional inequality
B、resource integration helps regional development
C、the scale of a firm influences its profitability
D、the returns to scale economy are declining
答案A
解析 本题是推断题。根据题干中的关键词social network和stock exchange定位至第二段。该段前两句指出区域发展不平等是规模经济所致。随后列举了“社交网络和证券交易所的规模越庞大，越能吸引客户创造更高回报，而高回报又使得企业不断扩张并聚集在少数地区”予以说明。因此，提及社交网络和证券交易所是为了说明“规模经济导致区域发展不平衡”。故答案选A。B项“资源整合有助于区域发展”属过度推测，故排除；C项“企业规模影响其盈利能力”和D项“规模经济的回报正在减少”都只是事例中的一个细节，并非举例目的，故均排除。
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