Part C

　　Directions:

　　Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (10 points)

　　Economics, as we know it, is the social science concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. Economists focus on the way in which individuals, groups, business enterprises, and governments seek to achieve efficiently any economic objective they select. (46) Other fields of study also contribute to this knowledge: Psychology and ethics try to explain how objectives are formed, history records changes in human objectives, and sociology interprets human behavior in social contexts.

　　Standard economics can be divided into two major fields. (47)  The first, price theory or microeconomics, explains how the interplay of supply and demand in competitive markets creates a multitude of individual prices, wage rates, profit margins, and rental changes.  Microeconomics assumes that people behave rationally. Consumers try to spend their income in ways that give them as much pleasure as possible. As economists say, they maximize utility. For their part, entrepreneurs seek as much profit as they can extract from their operations.

　　The second field, macroeconomics, deals with modern explanations of national income and employment. Macroeconomics dates from the book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1935), by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. His explanation of prosperity and depression centers on the total or aggregate demand for goods and services by consumers, business investors, and governments, (48)  Because, according to Keynes, inadequate total demand increases unemployment, the indicated cure is either more investment by businesses or more spending and consequently larger budget deficits by government.

　　Economic issues have occupied people’s minds throughout the ages. (49) Aristotle and Plato in ancient Greece wrote about problems of wealth, property, and trade, both of whom were prejudiced against commerce, feeling that to live by trade was undesirable.The Romans borrowed their economic ideas from the Greeks and showed the same contempt for trade. (50)  During the Middle Ages the economic ideas of the Roman Catholic church were expressed in the law of the church, which condemned the taking of interest for money loaned and regarded commerce as inferior to agriculture.

　　Economics as a subject of modern study, distinguishable from moral philosophy and politics, dates from the work, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), by the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith. Mercantilism and physiocracy were precursors of the classical economics of Smith and his 19th-century successors.

　　答案

　　46.其他領域的研究也有助于對此的理解：心理學和倫理學試圖解釋目標是如何形成的，歷史記錄著人們所追求的目標的變化，社會學則從社會環境的角度來解釋人們的行為。

　　47.第一個領域，價格理論或微觀經濟學，解釋在競爭的市場中供需間的相互作用是怎樣導致了大量的個別價格、工資率、利潤空間和租金的變化。

　　48.因為，按照凱恩斯的理論，不充分的總體需求會增加失業，建議的解決方式是企業擴大投資或政府增加開支，繼而增加預算赤字。

　　49.古希臘的亞里士多德和柏圖都在著作中談到財富、財產和貿易問題，兩人都對商業持有偏見，認為靠生意來謀生是不足取的。

　　50.在中世紀，羅馬天主教會的經濟學思想表達在其教法中，教法譴責從借貸中獲利的行為，并認為商業地位劣于農業。

　　總體分析

　　本文主要介紹了經濟學的研究發展歷史。

　　第一段：經濟學的定義及研究對象。

　　第二、三段：經濟學的兩大領域：微觀經濟學和宏觀經濟學。

　　第四、五段：經濟學研究的古代和現代理論。