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  3. Should the Treasury sell its economic forecasting computers for scrap? For the past two years no one outside the Conservative Pa

Should the Treasury sell its economic forecasting computers for scrap? For the past two years no one outside the Conservative Pa

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问题     Should the Treasury sell its economic forecasting computers for scrap? For the past two years no one outside the Conservative Party and White-hall has believed a Treasury forecast. Anyone with half an eye on the unemployment figures or with a mortgage knew that Chancellor Norman Lamont’s repeated claims about recovery being "just around the corner" were untrue.
    Yet only a fortnight ago Gary Becker, an American economist, won a Nobel prize for his work on using economics to explain aspects of human behavior, such as drug addiction and crime. So why do e-conomists using Britain’s longest running predictive model still have trouble forecasting whether people will spend more or less money in the shops in the next three months? The answer is that they are caught in a race they cannot win, where however fast they try to keep their predictive equations abreast (not behind) of changing patterns in production and spending, peoples’ behavior changes faster.
    Some people claim economics and econometrics should be expelled from the broad scientific church. But that would be foolish. Their present weakness is that they are only perfect when dealing with theory. Use them to make real-world forecasts and things go wrong-principally the answers. But that is typical of a young science. Until the 1930s, only economists were interested in accurately predicting the economic behavior of large numbers of people. The Depression made it a matter of wider interest and urgency. The emergence then of national income statistics helped economics and econometrics to develop. But the art in using both still lies in knowing, when you are crossing the line between prediction and guesswork.
    The government seems not to recognize this. Of late it has pushed and pulled the levers of money supply, tax and interest rates like children let loose on the bridge of a ship. And politicians such as Lamont also have a hand in Treasury forecasts.
    "That is the worst way to use a science" , says Becker. "If economics has any claim to be a science and to belong to the Nobel award structure—and I firmly believe that it does—then economists should avoid political propaganda and convey to the public some flavor of the scientific quality of economics. The government should stop interfering and let its specialists apply their programs, which embody years of experience, as tools to solve the problem of how to make the economy healthy".  
American economist Gary Becket______.
选项 A、objected to the involvement of economics in political propaganda
B、declared Lamont’s claim about economic recovery untrue
C、opposed increasing cash supply to stimulate economic growth
D、foresaw people’s behavior in consumption and production
答案A
解析 细节题。题干中的“Gary Becket”出自文章第二段和最后一段。第二段提到，加里·贝克因为利用经济学解释人类行为的研究而获得了诺贝尔奖；最后一段指出：贝克认为，经济学家应该避免政治宣传，应该向公众传达经济学的一些科学特性。A符合题意，为正确选项。B是关注失业数字或抵押的人的观点；贝克只是认为政府应该停止干预，没有反对增加货币供应，所以C与文意不符；D与第二段的意思不符。
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