Directions(1-5): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
Beside a serene lake in Switzerland sits a modern glass building called the Cube. Wide-leafed tobacco plants grow in the lobby. In one room machines that can “smoke” more than a dozen cigarettes at a time dutifully puff away, measuring the chemicals that consumers would inhale. The research centre is run by Philip Morris International (PMI), which sells Marlboro and other brands around the world. The facility’s purpose is not to assess the risks of smoking, but to determine whether this huge cigarette-maker might get out of selling cigarettes altogether. André Calantzopoulos, PMI’s chief executive, talks about moving to a “smoke-free future”, with the firm’s business comprised entirely of alternatives to cigarettes. “We are crystal clear where we are going as a company: we want to move out of cigarettes as soon as possible,” he says. Mr Calantzopoulos has the boldest goals in this regard, but he is not the only tobacco executive to tout a new direction. Nicandro Durante, chief executive of British American Tobacco (BAT), PMI’s main rival, says that investing in lower-risk products is a win for shareholders, consumers and society. The idea that large tobacco companies might advance public health seems almost laughable. They still clash frequently with courts and regulators. It was only in November, after more than a decade of resistance, that companies began to comply with a landmark ruling from an American court in 2006 stating that they had worked for decades to deny the risks of smoking. Since November 26th firms have had, for example, to include wording in adverts that they “intentionally” designed smokes in a way that made them more addictive. Yet the firms also make safer alternatives. E-cigarettes have been around for a while; a newer invention are products that heat tobacco without producing all the deadly stuff that comes from burning it. PMI sells one such “heat not burn” (HNB) product, called IQOS, in nearly three dozen countries, including Italy, Switzerland, Japan, Russia and South Africa. Britain’s Committee on Toxicity recently found that people using HNB products are exposed to between 50% and 90% fewer “harmful and potentially harmful” compounds compared with conventional cigarettes. Public Health England, a government agency, says there is a large amount of evidence that shows e-cigarettes, too, are much less harmful than smoking, by at least 95%. Mr Calantzopoulos wants two-fifths of PMI’s revenue to come from IQOS, e-cigarettes and other safer products by 2025—and “hopefully much more”. Much will depend on regulators. In America, the world’s second-largest tobacco market after China, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to begin a regulatory process to get companies to reduce nicotine in cigarettes, rendering them less addictive, while making it easier for the firms to introduce safer products.
Scott Gottlieb, the FDA’s commissioner, says that change may be the single most important step he can take to advance public health. Smoking kills more Americans than car crashes, murder and drugs combined. Early in 2018 PMI may get the FDA’s approval to sell IQOS in America. PMI would license the product to Altria, which sells Marlboro in America. A few months later IQOS may also become the first tobacco product the FDA allows to be advertised as less harmful than cigarettes (using a rule from 2009). PMI has submitted more than 2m pages of evidence to that end. All this puts the tobacco industry and those who attack it in an odd position. Companies are developing products that could save millions of lives each year, while still making an addictive product that is known to cause fatal diseases. Next to the Cube stands a PMI factory that can make up to 17bn cigarettes a year. Anti-smoking campaigners, including Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, who leads the implementation of the World Health Organisation’s anti-smoking treaty, are particularly dismayed by firms’ attempts to stymie anti-tobacco measures in poor and middle-income countries. Tobacco-makers have sued countries or threatened litigation over their rules to limit conventional smoking. PMI, for example, argued that Uruguay’s graphic warnings on cigarette packages violated the terms of a trade deal (a judge decided against the firm in 2016). BAT has a case pending in Kenya against its anti-tobacco laws. Even if a country wins in the end, tobacco firms’ resistance means that anti-smoking policies are usually delayed, both in the sued country and in others wary of starting legal battles. Thousands of new smokers might light up in the meantime. Tobacco companies also fight the one measure that really curbs smoking: sudden spikes in tax levied on cigarettes. The business case for conventional cigarettes is clear. They remain wildly profitable. Matthew Grainger, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, estimates that the average profit margin on a premium cigarette can reach about 80%. Nor has the impact of regulation been all bad for the tobacco industry. In countries where advertising is banned, large companies save on marketing costs and young brands find it harder to challenge them. As smoking rates decline in much of the West, firms have been able to raise prices for cigarettes in rich countries while promoting smoking elsewhere. New smoking products also promise to benefit Big Tobacco. The giants were late entrants to the e-cigarette market but caught up quickly by buying up popular brands and launching their own products. They now have around four-fifths of the market. E-cigarette sales doubled between 2014 and 2016, though still make up under 5% of total tobacco revenues. New products are also harder for rivals to replicate than conventional cigarettes. BAT points to $2.5bn of investments in new, lower-risk products since 2011; PMI has invested more than $3bn since 2008. Big companies also have the resources to seek regulatory approval for new products whereas smaller firms may struggle to do so.
1. What is the main aim of Philip Morris International’s chief executive described in the passage?
- His main aim is to double the sell of the company.
- Their main aim is to find the alternatives of cigarettes.
- To create the monopoly in creating alternatives of cigarettes.
2. What is true regarding the passage?
- Both companies who manufactures cigarettes is researching for the alternative of cigarettes.
- Chief Executive of BAT thinks that to research a lower risk product is a win-win situation for shareholders.
- Both companies want to move in smoke free future or less smoky future.
3. Why author said the idea of tobacco companies to make world smoke free is laughable?
- Because all the large companies designed smoke in a way that made person more addictive.
- They had more often clashes with courts and regulators.
- Because all the large companies wants to find alternatives of cigarettes.
4. What is the problem before the young brands as described in the passage?
- They find it harder to do the marketing of the product in front of the big advertisement campaign of giant brands.
- In countries where advertisement is banned it is hard to grow for the young brands.
- Research cost to find alternative of cigarettes is very high and young brands can not bear that costs.
5. Which of the following can be true according to the passage?
- The big cigarettes giants are late to the e-cigarettes market.
- e-cigarettes market have a very little share of total tobacco revenue.
- It is easier for the big companies to seek regulatory approval for new products due to its heavy resources.
Direction (6-10): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it.
Why is productivity growth low if information technology is advancing rapidly? Prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s, this question has in recent years again become one of the hottest in economics. Its salience has grown as techies have become convinced that machine learning and artificial intelligence will soon put hordes of workers out of work (among tech-moguls, Bill Gates has called for a robot tax to deter automation, and Elon Musk for a universal basic income). A lot of economists think that a surge in productivity that would leave millions on the scrapheap is unlikely soon, if at all. Yet this year’s meeting of the American Economic Association, which wound up in Philadelphia on January 7th, showed they are taking the tech believers seriously. A session on weak productivity growth was busy; the many covering the implications of automation were packed out. Recent history seems to support productivity pessimism. From 1995 to 2004 output per hour worked grew at an annual average pace of 2.5%; from 2004 to 2016 the pace was just 1%. Elsewhere in the G7 group of rich countries, the pace has been slower still. An obvious explanation is that the financial crisis of 2007-08 led firms to defer productivity-boosting investment. Not so, say John Fernald, of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and co-authors, who estimate that in America, the slowdown began in 2006. Its cause was decelerating “total factor productivity”—the residual that determines GDP after labour and capital have been accounted for. Productivity has stagnated despite swelling research spending. This supports the popular idea that fewer transformative technologies are left to be discovered. Others take almost the diametrically opposed view. A presentation by Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT pointed to recent sharp gains in machines’ ability to recognise patterns. They can, for instance, outperform humans at recognising most images—crucial to the technology behind driverless cars—and match dermatologists’ accuracy in diagnosing skin cancer. Mr Brynjolfsson and his co-authors forecast that such advances will eventually lead to a widespread reorganisation of jobs, affecting high- and low-skilled workers alike.
Productivity pessimism remains the norm among official forecasters, but more academics are trying to understand how automation may affect the economy. In a series of papers, Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University present new theoretical models of innovation. They propose that technological progress be divided into two categories: the sort that replaces labour with machines; and that which creates new, more complex tasks for humans. The first, automation, pushes down wages and employment. The second, the creation of new tasks, can restore workers’ fortunes. Historically, the authors argue, the two types of innovation seem to have been in balance, encouraged by market forces. If automation leads to a labour glut, wages fall, reducing the returns to further automation, so firms find new, more productive ways to put people to work instead. As a result, previous predictions of technology-induced joblessness have proved mostly wrong. However, the two forces can, in theory, fall out of sync. For example, if capital is cheap relative to wages, the incentive to automate could prevail permanently, leading the economy to robotise completely. The authors speculate that, for now, biases towards capital in the tax code, or simply an “almost singular focus” on artificial intelligence, might be tilting firms towards automation, and away from thinking up new tasks for people. Another risk is that much of the workforce lacks the right skills to complete the new-economy tasks that innovators might dream up. These ideas shed light on the productivity paradox. Mr Brynjolfsson and his co-authors argue that it can take years for the transformative effects of general-purpose technologies such as artificial intelligence to be fully felt. If firms are consumed by efforts to automate, and such investments take time to pay off, it makes sense that productivity growth would stall. Investment has not been unusually low relative to GDP in recent years, but it has shifted away from structures and equipment, towards research-and-development spending. If research in automation does start yielding big pay-offs, the question is what will happen to the displaced workers. Recent trends suggest the economy can create unskilled jobs in sectors such as health care or food services where automation is relatively difficult. And if robots and algorithms become far cheaper than workers, their owners should become rich enough to consume much more of everything, creating more jobs for people. The risk is that without sufficient investment in training, technology will relegate many more workers to the ranks of the low-skilled. To employ them all, pay or working conditions might have to deteriorate. If productivity optimists are right, the eventual problem may not be the quantity of available work, but its quality.
6. What is true regarding the recently low productivity growth?
- Recently low productivity growth is almost similar to the low productivity growth of 1980s and early 1990s.
- Productivity growth is on its low after 2004.
- Machine learning and artificial intelligence is the main reason of low productivity growth.
7. What is true regarding the passage?
- American Economic Association called up for a meeting in Philadelphia due low productivity growth.
- In the American Economic Association many discussed about the implications of automation with respect to productivity growth.
- Techies have convince that many workers will be unemployed due to automation.
8. What is the reason argued by the author for recent low productivity growth?
- Because the productivity growth rate is also low in G7 group of rich countries.
- Author argued that due to financial crisis of 2007-08 firms defer productivity boosting investment so there may be chance for less productivity.
- There may be less productivity due to low GDP of many countries.
9. Which of the following is true regarding the model of Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo?
- They divide automation progress in two categories.
- They said in their model that due to machine learning and artificial intelligence wages and employment will increase.
- According to them new and more complex tasks will be generated due to automation.
10. What is the main concerns discussed by author in this passage?
- Author argued that more investment in training needed in case of automation.
- Due to new and complex tasks many worker will be disqualified for job due to their low skill.
- Author argued that main problem will have with quality of work due to unskilled worker.
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Content relevant for rrb po
Level and structure is same as banking exams ask for.
Heartily thanks to the hardworking team who provided this content😊 🙏😇
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