Since1972 Americans have sat through more than 9,000 episodes(集)of “The Price is Right”, a game show with an economic twist. After being selected from the audience by the famous catchphrase(流行口号)-“come on down”-contestants must guess the exact price of prizes, ranging from guitars to garden furniture. If they bid too high, they are disqualified. In a recent paper, Jonathan Hartley of Harvard Kennedy School points out an interesting trend. Contestants have got a lot worse at guessing prices.
Technology may play a role. Reaching for a smartphone is easier than recalling a fact from memory. Who remembers phone numbers anymore? People may just fall out of the habit of recalling prices. Still, the rise of the smartphone is a recent phenomenon - it cannot explain why contestants became worse guessers during the 1970s,1980s and 1990s.
Economic changes may be a better explanation. A paper published in 2001 suggested that higher GDP growth raised “price-recall error”. Like the famous politician who thinks a gallon of milk costs $15,as people get richer they worry less about the money available to spend.
A related trend is that Americans devote a shrinking share of their household spending to goods - which tend to appear on “The Price Is Right” -- and a rising share to services, such as dining and childcare, which do not. Contestants might be pretty good at guessing the price of a gym class or a babysitter.
Perhaps the most interesting explanation, however, relates to globalization. In the early 1970s consumers had a relatively limited selection of products to choose from. Around the time that “The Price Is Right” first aired, Sears catalogue’s were hundreds of pages long. But a search on Amazon brings up nearly 1,000 results just for the word “toaster”. Firms offer a huge range of differentiated products at wildly different prices, allowing consumers to satisfy their special wants. The result is that guessing prices is trickier.
The rise of online shopping adds further confusion. Online retailers respond instantly to fluctuations in supply and demand. Alberto Cavallo of Harvard Business School finds that some large retailers now change their prices. both upwards and downwards, twice as frequently as they did a decade ago. All of this suggests that contestants’ guesses may yet get worse.
8. What does Jonathan Hartley find out from “The Price Is Right”?
A.Technology makes it easier to guess prices. |
B.Guessing prices has become a growing trend. |
C.Today’s customers guess prices more poorly |
D.Having the habit of guessing prices is quite usual |
9. Why does the author mention “the price of a gallon of milk” in Paragraph 3?
A.To say guessing the price wrong is usual among politicians. |
B.To present “The Price Is Right” leads to focus on daily goods. |
C.To show Americans are spending more on services than goods. |
D.To explain a good economy makes people pay less attention to prices. |
10. What does the underlined word “fluctuations” in the last paragraph mean?
A.trends |
B.changes |
C.customers |
D.examples |