The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which consumers largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen, striving to make profits, produce these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under competitive pressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the demand of individual consumers, coupled with the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and how resources are used to produce it.

An important factor in a market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall in response to relative demands of consumers and supplies offered by seller-producers. If the product is in short supply relative to the demand, the price will be bid up and some consumers will be eliminated from the market. If, on the other hand, producing more of a commodity results in reducing its cost, this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers, which in turn will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the regulating mechanism in the American economic system.

The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources (private property), and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual.

53. According to the passage, a private-enterprise economy is characterized by__.
[A] private property and rights concerned
[B] manpower and natural resources control
[C] ownership of productive resources
[D] free contracts and prices

[答案] A

[解題思路]

本文第三段第一句話指出"The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individuals are allowed to own productive resources (private property) , and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit"（私有企業經濟的一個重要因素是允許個人擁有生產資料（私有財產），允許他們雇傭勞動力，控制自然資源，通過生產產品、提供服務來獲取利潤），第二句話進一步指出"In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual"（在美國經濟中，私有財產的概念不僅包括生產資料的所有權，也包括一定的其它權利，比如，產品價格的決定權或與其他私有個體的自由簽約權），這說明了private property包含了兩個方面。而四個選項中只有A選項包含了這兩個方面，因此A是正確答案。

[題目譯文]

根據這篇文章，私有企業經濟的特征是           。
[A] 私有財產和相關的權利
[B] 人力和自然資源的控制
[C] 生產資料所有權
[D] 自由合同與價格

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