2017年武大考博英语试题与答案.pdf

武 汉 大 学 20 17 年攻读博士学位研究生外语综合水平考试试题 （满分值100 分） 科目名称：英语 科目代码：1101 注意：所有的答题内容必须写在答案纸上，凡写在试题或草稿纸上的一律无效。 Part I Reading Comprehension (2’×20 = 40 points) Directions: In this part of the test, there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statements, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET. Passage One Mr Gordon is right that the second industrial revolution involved never-to-be-repeated changes. But that does not mean that driverless cars count for nothing. Messrs Erixon and Weigel are also right to worry about the West’s dismal recent record in producing new companies. But many old firms are not run by bureaucrats and have reinvented themselves many times over: General Electric must be on at least its ninth life. And the impact of giant new firms born in the past 20 years such as Uber, Google and Facebook should not be underestimated: they have all the Schumpeterian characteristics the authors admire. On the pessimists’ side the strongest argument relies not on closely watching corporate and investor behavior but rather on macro-level statistics on productivity. The figures from recent years are truly dismal. Karim Foda, of the Brookings Institution, calculates that labor productivity in the rich world is growing at its slowest rate since 1950. Total factor productivity (which tries to measure innovation) has grown at just 0.1% in advanced economies since 2004, well below its historical average. Optimists have two retorts. The first