1 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Inflation (通货膨胀) is showing no signs of slowing down,     1     (make) it harder for workers to make ends meet.

The Consumer Price Index     2     (increase) 8.3% from a year ago,     3     (high) than the estimated 8.1%, according to the US Bureau of Statistics.

Although it was down     4     (slight) from the March peak, inflation is still growing at the fastest annual pace in about four     5     (decade).

As of March, close     6     two-thirds, or 64%, of the US population was living paycheck to paycheck, just shy of the high of 65% in 2021, according to    7     LendingClub report.

“The number of people     8     (live) paycheck to paycheck today is reminiscent (让人想起) of the early days of the pandemic,     9     it has become the dominant lifestyle across income brackets,” said Anuj Nayar, LendingClub’s     10     (finance) health officer.

2 . The concept “China chic”, or guochao, has become popular in recent years. According to relevant data, from January to July 2022, the search volume for “Guochao” as a keyword has increased by 392. 66% year on year. Big Data Report of 2021 Guochao Pride Search from Baidu revealed that the level of interest in guochao has skyrocketed in the past 10 years. Domestic（国内 的）products are in fashion, and domestic consumption has increasingly become an important choice for the new generation of consumers.

China chic mixes unique cultural elements with the latest trends in various industries, which not only satisfies younger consumers' needs for pursuing personality and fashion, but also plays a role in bringing back traditional culture. The rise of China chic is the result of China's rapid economic development and has some cultural motivations behind it. Besides, the continuous improvement of the consumption power of Chinese people is an important reason for the rise of China chic.

Most importantly, cultural confidence is the driving force for the rise of China chic. Five thousand years of Chinese civilization has left us a rich cultural heritage. Guochao is, in many ways, the perfect representative of the new wave of Chinese nationalism. Starting in the fashion industry, this trend shows Chinese consumers' newfound interest in Chinese cultural heritage. The guochao trend is at its strongest among young adults who live in an even more powerful China and thus have a strong feeling of national pride. China's national strength is increasing, and its soft power is also on the rise. Even so, we still have a long way to go to carry forward this China chic. But as it has become a part of people's lives, no doubt there will even be more diverse China chic products showing Chinese charm in the future.

1. Which statement reflects China chie's situation in recent years?

A．It has not often been searched in Baidu.

B．It has gained great popularity among Chinese.

C．It has attracted consumers of older generation.

D．It has been widely accepted in different cultures.

2. What does the underlined word “skyrocketed” in the first paragraph mean?

A．Risen sharply.	B．Dropped obviously.
C．Remained stable.	D．Changed slightly.

3. Which factor for the rise of China chic is NOT mentioned?

A．The rapid economic development of China.

B．Cultural confidence from rich cultural heritage.

C．Government's measures to bring back traditional culture.

D．The continuous improvement of Chinese consumption power.

4. What can be concluded from the last paragraph?

A．The selection of China chic products is limited.

B．China chic has little influence on people's lives.

C．China chic still needs developing and improving.

D．The author is disappointed at the future of China chic.

3 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（1个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。

Thousands of UK workers are starting a four-day work week from Monday with no cut to their pay in the largest trial of its kind.

The trial program,     1     will last for six months, involves 3, 300 workers from 70 companies,     2     (range) from providers of financial services to a fish-and-chip restaurant. During the program, workers receive 100 % of their pay for working only 80 % of their usual week, in exchange for promising to maintain 100 % of their productivity. The program is being run by not-for-profit 4 Day Week Global, Autonomy,     3     think tank, and the 4 Day Week UK Campaign in partnership with researchers from Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.

Sienna O’Rourke, brand manager at Pressure Drop Brewing, an independent brewery in London,     4     (tell) CNN Business that the company’s     5     (big) goal was to improve the mental health and well-being of its employees. “The pandemic has made us think a great deal about work and how people organize their lives.” she said, “We’re doing this     6     (improve) the lives of our staff and be part of a progressive change in the world.”     7     (give) that the company manufactures and ships products, workers have less     8     (flexible) about when and where they work. But any difficulties in navigating holiday and sick leave would     9     (tackle) as a team. It is also worthy of note that researchers will measure the impact the new working pattern will have     10     productivity levels, gender equality, the environment as well as worker well-being.

4 . The Lipstick Effect Absent During This Pandemic

With customers stuck inside their homes, they don’t seem to be________to wear or purchase lipstick and instead are stocking up on sheet masks and hand sanitizer (消毒液). This is a change from typical customer behavior, with lipstick sales________ experiencing a boom during economic crises.

In the four years from1929 to1933, industrial production in the United States halved whereas sales of cosmetics rose. A(n)________pattern emerged around the turn of this century. An executive at cosmetics giant Estee Lauder________a “lipstick index” after sales of expensive lipstick jumped following the 9/11 terror attacks. More________, sales of lipstick at John Lewis department stores in the United Kingdom rose 31 percent in the three months leading up to the end of June last year in the wake of Brexit.

________not everyone is counting on the lipstick effect to work this time around. With beauty retailer Mecca forced to close its 100 stores across Australia and New Zealand, owner Jo Horgan________that it’s still too early to tell whether this effect will lead to sales growth.

In the past few months, Ms.Horgan’s focus has been on Mecca’s online offerings in an attempt to ________a portion of last year’s $444 million turnover (营业额 ). She has launched a(n)________host experience of free and personalized beauty consultations via FaceTime for Mecca customers.

“My gut feeling is that while people are self-isolating at home, they will start trying to look for ways to________ themselves and really enrich their soul by focusing on their skin, body and hair treatments, ” she says.

A similar trend has been________in sales at online beauty retailer Adore Beauty, which has seen a considerable increase in new customers. This increase, however, has failed to________into lipstick sales. Founder Kate Morris said Adore Beauty had seen three times as many new customers as normal but that lipstick and lip gloss sales were down 24 percent.

“While everybody is talking about the lipstick effect, it is not what we are currently seeing.________we are seeing big jumps in anything hygiene related. People have got the________about washing their hands. We are selling triple the amount of hand wash and hand sanitizer than we were a month ago,” she said.

Adore Beauty turned over more than $100 million last year and employs a staff of 170. Ms. Morris is looking to hire an additional ten staff members to cope with the increased demand while also trying to fund the further________of her brand.

She said the online retailer has also recorded big jumps in “essential” categories, with moisturizer up 73 percent last month and hair treatments up 43 percent.

1.

A．bothering

B．determined

C．experimenting

D．supposed

2.

A．effortlessly

B．historically

C．unlimitedly

D．rarely

3.

A．curious

B．established

C．similar

D．unique

4.

A．created

B．identified

C．promoted

D．suspended

5.

A．certainly

B．recently

C．tragically

D．importantly

6.

A．However

B．Hopefully

C．Meanwhile

D．Oddly

7.

A．cautions

B．denies

C．proves

D．explains

8.

A．cut

B．estimate

C．maintain

D．reverse

9.

A．collective

B．preventative

C．primary

D．virtual

10.

A．give up on

B．keep up with

C．make peace with

D．take care of

11.

A．evident

B．popular

C．marketable

D．universal

12.

A．break

B．check

C．combine

D．translate

13.

A．Additionally

B．Instead

C．Likewise

D．Strangely

14.

A．idea

B．message

C．question

D．truth

15.

A．education

B．expansion

C．research

D．sponsorship

5 . 听下面一段独白，回答以下小题。1.

A．1973.

B．36,500.

C．20.

D．300,000.

2.

A．Workers’ wages increase largely every year.

B．More money is spent on citizens welfare.

C．Foreign investment is favoured.

D．Business activity is regulated.

3.

A．Ireland’s economic growth.	B．Ireland’s future development.
C．Ireland’s amazing history.	D．Ireland’s traditional values.

6 . Singing the blues, or hitting all the right notes? Those are two potential interpretations one could make based on the latest quarterly results from Tencent Music Entertainment Group, China’s equivalent of Spotify, which is the country’s dominant provider of online music services.     1     But from our perspective, the report—while downbeat on the surface—is filled with positive signals showing a company working hard to build a sustainable foundation in China’s vibrant online music scene.

Industry watchers will recall that Tencent Music was among a group of Chinese tech giants that were fined last year and ordered to end their anti-competitive ways. The highest profile member of that group was e-commerce giant Alibaba, which was ordered to pay a record $2.75 billion and end its practice of threatening to kick merchants off its popular marketplaces unless they agreed not to open shops on rival platforms.

Tencent Music, the music arm of gaming giant Tencent, got off with a much lighter fine of just 500, 000 yuan ($74, 000).     2     But more significantly, the company was ordered to end its practice of using its market power to sign master licensing agreements for China with big music labels.

As a result of that action, Tencent Music is now facing more serious competition from its smaller rivals.     3     That big-figure decline was repeated throughout the report. One of the most representative was a 1.8% year-on-year decline in monthly active users (MAUs) for the company’s online music services, which dropped to 604 million. MAUs for the company’s smaller social entertainment services division fell by an even larger 28% to 162 million. The company blamed the music user decline on reduced marketing spending and cost controls, while it attributed the social entertainment decline to “industry and macro headwinds.”

    4     That shows the company is focusing on profitable users over simple big user numbers. Paying users for the company’s music services rose 32% year-on-year to 80.2 million during the quarter, helping to fuel an 18% rise in the company’s overall music subscription revenue that accounts for nearly a third of its total. The big theme is that the company is trying to build up its paying subscribers by offering a wider range of services for music lovers and aspiring musicians.

A．That showed up in its revenue, which fell 15% year-on-year to about 6.6 billion yuan in this year’s first quarter.

B．Investors seem to be taking the former view, with Tencent Music shares falling 1.5% on Tuesday after the results came out.

C．While total user numbers were down, the picture was brighter for users who actually paid for Tencent Music’s services.

D．Still, the loss of its monopoly power took not only a toll on the company’s revenue, but also hit its profit.

E．It’s only a small amount for a company that generated 3 billion yuan in profits last year.

F．It is also promoting its Tencent Musician platform to cultivate budding young talents.

7 . If economist are so smart, why ain’t they rich?

After I wrote a newsletter last month on how economists’ views differ from those of ordinary people, I got emails to the effect of, “If economists are so smart, why ain’t they rich?” I’m not an economist, so the question doesn’t _________ me. The possible explanations, _________, are interesting — sometimes funny, sometimes kind of deep. Here are five theories.

1. Economists aren’t trying to be rich. A lot of economists go to work for institutions of government and higher education. You don’t go to work for such employers because you _________ to vast riches. Nobody asks Trappist monks why they aren’t rich, because it’s understood that getting rich is not their aspiration. Economics likewise offers rewards beyond _________.

2. Economists are too good at economics. Learning a little economics is useful for a lot of _________ careers, from management to banking. Warren Buffett, Steven Cohen, Kenneth Griffin, Henry Kravis and Elon Musk are among the billionaires who have bachelor or master degrees in economics. The _________ is loving it so much that you get your doctorate and become an impoverished postdoc or assistant professor.

3. Economists aren’t actually smart. I don’t _________ this one. I think that economists are smart. But some — not the good ones — can be _________. They know their subspecialties well but are weak on others, such as economic history. These economists have _________ but not wisdom.

4. Economists are __________ by the “efficient market hypothesis”. There’s a joke about a young economist who bends down to pick up a $20 bill he sees on the sidewalk. An older colleague tells him not to __________ because if there were really a $20 bill there, someone would have picked it up already. Devotion to the efficient market hypothesis — which assumes that prices reflect all available information—__________ economists from trying to beat the market, and that’s why they never get rich.

5. Economists do think they can beat the market, but they’re wrong. A great __________ of this is Long-Term Capital Management, a heralded hedge fund (对冲基金) that included a pair of Nobel economics laureates, Robert Merton and Myron Scholes. It __________ in spectacular fashion in 1998.

Warren Buffett, despite earning a master of science degree in economics from Columbia University in 1951, told a CNBC interviewer in 2016, “I don’t pay any attention to what economists say, frankly.” He is __________ that economics isn’t an ideal way to make money as an investor. On the other hand, that’s not what it’s for. It’s a science of means and ends. Let economists be economists!

1.

A．benefit

B．annoy

C．amaze

D．sacrifice

2.

A．therefore

B．moreover

C．though

D．instead

3.

A．aspire

B．object

C．contribute

D．appeal

4.

A．challenge

B．knowledge

C．imagination

D．money

5.

A．profitable

B．academic

C．professional

D．competitive

6.

A．merit

B．opportunity

C．mistake

D．shortage

7.

A．oppose

B．convince

C．buy

D．confront

8.

A．short-sighted

B．well-rounded

C．under-educated

D．narrow-minded

9.

A．prospects

B．allowance

C．expertise

D．weaknesses

10.

A．inspired

B．restrained

C．overwhelmed

D．fueled

11.

A．bother

B．overlook

C．initiate

D．withdraw

12.

A．bans

B．distinguishes

C．isolates

D．discourages

13.

A．obstacle

B．example

C．highlight

D．consequence

14.

A．overtook rivals

B．went bankrupt

C．reaped rewards

D．was launched

15.

A．sophisticated

B．false

C．biased

D．right

8 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Play the financial markets: it’s not rocket science

Back in the 1950s, economists developed Nobel Prize-winning theories for how best to invest money in financial markets. And     1     (do) it, they drew on the theory of probability. The result was Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT),     2     shows how to create a mix of stocks, bonds and other assets (股票、证券和其他资产) to get the best possible return for the     3     (low) risk. By feeding in past performance data for each asset, the formulas of MPT reveal the relative proportions of each     4     (need) to achieve this best performance.

To pull off this miracle, MPT involves some fearsome equations that only rocket scientists might     5     (expect) to solve. But—like any attempt to model reality with mathematics—MPT makes assumptions, and the bad news is     6     they’re not very realistic. A wealth of data now suggests that MPT simply cannot capture the real complexity of markets,     7     (make) its conclusions not that trustworthy.

Even Harry Markowitz, the US economist who won the economics Nobel Prize in 1990 for developing MPT,     8     (admit) he ignored his own theory and simply split his investments equally between stocks and bonds.

The lesson of the laws of chance this time is: don’t get too clever. When it comes to investment, history suggests most of us may do best     9     simply dividing our money among so-called index trackers that just follow entire sectors of the market—and then forget about them     10     we retire. After all, caution is the best policy.

9 .

A．The two sides of a coin.	B．A serious economics professor.
C．The effects of a financial crisis.	D．The definition of a financial crisis.

10 . It’s difficult to think about how to spend money, and deciding money value in the future is almost impossible to many people. That’s because it is hard for us to consider the opportunity costs of objects we purchase.

A study was conducted with people who wanted to purchase a car to determine their ability to assess the opportunity cost of that purchase. When asked “If you buy this car today, what will you not be able to do in the future as a result?”, the majority said, “If I buy this SUV today, I will not be able to buy a sports car tomorrow.” Nobody said that he would not be able to buy 300 lunches at a restaurant because they were, though unconsciously, restricted within the car field, not even attempting to think of an item from another field.

The nature of modern spending makes things even harder by making money less concrete. If I give you $1,000 in an envelope each week, you will see in the shop that what you’re buying comes at the expense of other things of the same price. After all, you have the real experience because you have to hand out the real money note if you want to get the object. But with credit cards and loans, financial mechanisms have become increasingly unclear, making it more difficult for people to compare the value of spending now with the value of money in the future as they are allowed to pay for the purchases later.

Irrelevant influences and considerations, such as a person’s present emotions or preferences, can influence how much worth someone places on an object too.

In a study, Professor Dan Ariely and his team asked participants to determine the value of objects like wine, chocolates and electronics.

“We first told them to consider whether they would pay the amount equivalent to the last two digits of their social security numbers,” he says. “We found a significant relation between the amount they were willing to pay and these digits.”

For instance, someone whose social security number (SSN) ends in 25 valued the objects much lower than someone with the last two digits of 78. For no logical reasons, the test subjects leaned toward the most recent number they had access to when valuing the items. Even with full information about the objects, some people had no logical point of reference for the value of the objects. Instead, they used their own irrelevant experiences as references.

1. According to the passage, the opportunity cost in consumption field refers to ______.

A．the cost to pay for various opportunities

B．what a person is willing to give up if he buys a specific item

C．the opportunities to invest in costly items

D．the comparison of prices of the same item from different sources

2. In the test, when buying cars, most people won’t think of the alternative 300 meals because ______.

A．they won’t have trouble in paying for meals

B．300 meals are not equal to the car in value

C．they can’t compare money values across categories

D．they personally prefer the car to food

3. Purchase through credit cards makes it harder for people to recognize money value because ______.

A．items paid by credit cards are cheaper than paid by cash

B．it’s easier for people to save money through credit cards

C．people have to pay an interest when buying through credit cards.

D．delay in payment may confuse people’s judgement of money value.

4. Why were many of Dan Ariely’s test participants willing to pay the same amount as the last two digits of their social security numbers?

A．Because they were not good at predicting values and counting numbers.

B．Because they made predictions with most convenient hints available.

C．Because they believed that their SSN digits were very valuable.

D．Because they tended to consult others and copy peers’ choices.