Tricky Paragraph Completion Questions

1.Age has a curvilinear relationship with the exploitation of opportunity. Initially, age will increase the likelihood that a person will exploit an enterpreneurial opportunity because people gather much of the knowledge necessary to exploit opportunities on the course of thier lives, and because age provides credibility in transmitting that information to others. However, as people become older, their willingness to bear risks declines, thier opportunity costs rise, and they become less receptive to new information.
(1) As a result,people transmit more information rather than experiment with new ideas as they reach an advanced age.  
(2) As a result,people are reluctant to experiment with new ideas as they reach an advanced age.   
(3) As a result,only people with lower opportunity costs exploit opportunity when they reach an advanced age.
 (4) As a result, people become reluctant to expliot entrepreneurial opportunities when they reach an advanced age.
Explanation: Options 1 and 2 are using a term "ideas" which is not mentioned in the paragraph.  Ideas and opportunities are two different things and are not same. Ruled out. 
Option 3 is against to the paragraph.  When authors says that the opportunity costs rise with age, how for "some people" it may not go up?
Option 4 is clearly completes the paragraph, saying that people at advance age are reluctant to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities.  So Option 4 is correct. 

2.I am sometimes attacked for imposing 'rules'. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate rules. All I do is report on how consumers react to different stimuli. I may say to a copywriter, "Research shows that commercials with celebrities are below average in persuading people to buy products. Are you sure you want to use a celebrity?" Call that a rule? Or I may say to an art director, "Research suggests that if you set the copy in black type on a white background, more people will read it than if you set it in white type on a black background." 

1.   Guidance based on applied research can hardly qualify as 'rules'.

2.   Thus, all my so called 'rules' are rooted in applied research.

3.   A suggestion perhaps, but scarcely a rule.

4.   Such principles are unavoidable if one wants to be systematic about consumer behaviour.

5.   Fundamentally it is about consumer behaviour - not about celebrities or type settings.

Observe the tone of the paragraph.  Author is attacked for imposing rules, But author is clearly justifying that he hate rules. (3rd sentence).  So if his reports are not rules, then what could they be? In the authors opinion they are "Suggestions". Option 3

Options 2 and 4 are justifying the authors' reports as rules. Also 4 mentions about consumer behaviour which is no where mentioned in the paragraph. So ruled out.  

Option 1 and 5 are using new terms Applied research and Consumer behaviour. Ruled out. 

3.Trade protectionism, disguised as concern for the climate, is raising its head. Citing competitiveness concerns, powerful industrialized countries are holding out threats of a levy on imports of energy-intensive products from developing countries that refuse to accept their demands. The actual source of protectionist sentiment in the OECD countries is, of course, their current lackluster economic performance, combined with the challenges posed by the rapid economic rise of China and India – in that order.

(1) Climate change is evoked to bring trade protectionism through the back door.

(2) OECD countries are taking refuge in climate change issues to erect trade barriers against these two countries.

(3) Climate change concerns have come as a convenient stick to beat the rising trade power of China and India.

(4) Defenders of the global economic status quo are posing as climate change champions.

(5) Today’s climate change champions are the perpetrators of global economic inequity.

Option 1 is just rephrasing the first line of the paragraph. May not be the concluding sentence. 
Option 2 mentions only OECD countries while the paragraph mentions “powerful industrialized
countries” of which the OECD countries are only a part. Furthermore, the option is again a repetition of ideas presented in the paragraph.
The focus of option 3 is on China and India, while the focus of the paragraph is talking about developing countries as a whole.
Option 5 using a phrase "global economic inequity" which is just an assertion. No evidence could be found in the paragraph. 
Option 4 addresses the gist of the paragraph. Powerful countries, including the OECD countries are posing as climate change champions due to their lacklustre economic performance as compared to China and India which are growing rapidly. Climate change champions‟ in this option completes the paragraph, and addresses the point raised in the first sentence.
Hence, the correct answer is option 4.