More and more in recent years, cities are stressing the arts as a mean

I think the Answer is A.

Find the actions the city is doing. Cities are stressing and investing.

The verbs, when used together with one subject, must be parallel. Only A & B make this parallel. B uses "development economically", which sounds ok, but in English we usually put our adjectives BEFORE the modified noun.

The key here is parallelism. Cities are "stressing" and "investing". So eliminate C, D and E.
"Greater economic development" is better than "greater development economically". Greater is an adjective here. Eliminate B.

Answer is A

More and more in recent years, cities are stressing the arts as a means to greater economic development and investing millions of dollars in cultural activities, despite strained municipal budgets and fading federal support.

a) to greater economic development and investing ---> CORRECT

b) to greater development economically and investing ---> Change in meaning. This incorrectly means "cities are stressing the arts economically". Instead it should mean, arts are a mean to greater economic development

c) of greater economic development and invest --> "as a means to" is the correct idiom. Moreover this option has parallelism error. "Stressing" is not parallel to "invest"

d) of greater development and invest --> "as a means to" is the correct idiom. Moreover this option has parallelism error. "Stressing" is not parallel to "invest"

e) for greater development and the investment of --> "as a means to" is the correct idiom. Moreover this option has parallelism error. "Stressing" is not parallel to " the investment of"

Choice A

Grammer Analysis :- The main subject cities is followed by two predicates. are stressing ....... and investing millions.......... both of which are in present continuous tense.
We already know from the context of the sentence that both the actions are happening in the same time frame recent years, so we do not have any need to change the tense of the second verb investing.
Hence the original sentence is correct as written.

Lets analyze the other choices.

B) In original sentence economic used as an adjective and modifies the noun development. Here economically works as an adverb and has no logical referent.

C) This choice converts the second predicate in simple present tense, which is unnecessary and awkward tense shift.

D) The same reason cited in choice C. Moreover this choice omits the adjective economic. Hence the sentence means Arts are means of development. The development can be of any type. e.g. cultural, economic etc. As per the original meaning Arts are means of economic development, which is not consistent with the meaning conveyed by this choice. Hence this is another reason to eliminate this choice.

E) This choice changes the entire meaning of the sentence. Arts are the means of economic development and investments of millions of dollars. Well, The arts are not any investment....

Hope that helps!

Hello Shraddha,

In your explanation above



The parallelism is between Cities are stressing....and Cities are investing... ie. Cities are doing 2 things which are stressing on arts as a means to achieve economic development and are investing millions of dollars....

Where as you have looked at greater economic development and investing millions as a part of list....which is not correct.

OG explanation also says that the 2 items parallel are : "stressing and Investing"... Can you please re-check the explanation above...

Hi WoundedTiger,

Thanks for pointing this out. I probably forgot to review my answer before submitting it. Indeed, the parallelism is between the two verbs "are stressing" and "(are) investing".

Thanks.
SJ

Tricky idioms:

as a means to : Outcome/Result
as a means of : action: Not fitting here.
as a means for : Always wrong on Gmat

You can take a note of these Idioms.

As a means to correct, C, D and E are out.

investing Vs Invest Vs Investment only investing is verb and is parallel to stressing(verb), but the decision point between A and B is tricky and need some more insight: Adjective Vs Adverb
economic development Vs Development economically

Economic(adjective) should modify the Noun development as soon as we change it to economically(adverb) it modifies the verb: stressing (it economically) and that doesn't make sense here, changes meaning. We need adjective here not adverb that's the take away.

Chose A. Parallelism is between stressing and investing. I don't agree with e-gmat's answer that economically does not mean financially. I think economically can be used for both finance and not wasteful.

Dear Ergenekon,
I got your p.m. and I am happy to respond.

First of all, you may find this blog helpful:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-sente ... al-ending/
The GMAT loves the "economic" vs. "economical" split.

As I think you already appreciate, these two words have very different meanings.
economic = related to the economy, to macro- or microeconomics;
an economic summit
the President's economic policy
the city's economic decisions (i.e., decisions about money policies, spending, investing, etc.)
economical = thrifty; cost-cutting; designed to save money
an economical restaurant (i.e. one where we can get inexpensive meals)
an economical car (i.e. that doesn't strain the budget of the person who bought it)
the city's economical decisions (i.e. city-wide cost-cutting measures)

Now, I believe your question concerns the adverb, "economically." This adverb corresponds to which adjective? Well, if we think more in terms of the pure mathematical grammatical patterns, then we could start with either adjective and turn it into this adverb. BUT, think about the logic of the word. The word "economic" most often denotes a large-scale process, not necessarily something that is the consequence of the decision of one person or a few people; after all, the economy involves the action of what Adam Smith called the "invisible hand," the emergent properties of the system which arise without anyone having intended them. By contrast, the word "economical" always implies a very specific decision of one person or a group of people.

By far, the most common use of the adverb "economically" would be in the latter context, describing the intentions and goals of the individuals who are in the process of enacting cost-cutting measures. It is conceivable to use the adverb in the former sense, but typically, the actor would a nation or other large group. For example,
India is advancing economically.
In that sense, clearly we discussing the national economy of India, so we are using the adverb in the "economic" sense, not in the "economical" sense.

Now, let's consider this SC question, and choices (A) & (B), which get the parallelism correct:
More and more in recent years, cities are stressing the arts as a means to greater economic development and investing millions of dollars in cultural activities, despite strained municipal budgets and fading federal support.
(A) to greater economic development and investing
(B) to greater development economically and investing
Incidentally, this question also test the very subtle idiom difference of "means of" vs. "means to." See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-sente ... -means-to/
Obviously, (A) is flawless, but let's ignore that for the moment. What is going on with (B)? Suppose (B) were correct: what would it mean?
.... cities are stressing the arts as a means to greater development economically ....
Notice that, in this (B) version, we have absolutely no idea what kind of development the author has in mind----artistic development? personal development? moral development? spiritual development? The arts are going to support this kind of development, whatever it is, and somehow this connection between the arts and this unspecified development is related to the economic situation of the city. You see, if the development we have in mind is very specifically the development of the city's economy, then we need to use the adjective "economic" to modify development, not the adverb "economically" to modify the verb "are stressing." We are not talking about a variety of "stressing" that is related to the economy; we are trying to talk about a kind of "development" that is related to the economy. When what we want to modify is a noun, not a verb, we need an adjective, not an adverb.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Mike, thanks for your quick reply. My problem with this question was that I could not understand official guide explanation : adverb economically conveys incorrect meaning.
I understand why B is wrong. However, I think economically was used correctly here from the meaning standpoint, it is jut a wrong part of speech. Don't you agree with me?

Dear Ergenekon,
My friend, you are trying to separate meaning from grammar, and that doesn't work. Changing the part of speech changes the meaning. That's what I explained above. On the one change, "as a means to greater economic development" = the precise meaning we want: we know what kind of development is meant. On the other hand, "as a means to greater development economically" = now, as I have said, we have no idea what kind of development this is: that's a colossal change in meaning. Which meaning we are taking from "economically" is also debatable, not clearly wrong but open to interpretation in a way that is less than ideal; furthermore, how it would be modifying the verb of the sentence changes the meaning even further. Changing a single adjective to an adverb leaves a noun strangely un-modified and a verb strangely modified: both are undesirable changes in meaning.
Does all this make sense?
Mike

What is the intended meaning here ?

Is it

Cities are investing millions of dollars in cultural activities

or

Arts is a method to achieve investment of millions of dollars in cultural activities

?

If it is the latter and we ignore the idiom error in option E, can option E not be considered as a correct choice ? That way this sentence can be interpreted as :

arts is a method to achieve greater economic development and investment of millions of dollars in cultural activities.

I know, I am somewhere wrong in comprehending this statement. Please help me to point out the flaw in my understanding.

Dear AK700,

I'm happy to respond. Frankly, I wouldn't endorse either of the meanings you propose. Let's look at the prompt.
1) ... cities are stressing the arts as a means to greater economic development ...
That's the first and most important thing the cities are doing. By stressing the arts, these cities hope to stimulate business growth in general.

It's quite typical, in American cities, that a city will encourage an arts program, say, a gallery walk on the first Friday of the month, and inevitably the people who participate wind up going out to dinner and spending money that supports the downtown businesses in general.

The goal is general economic development of all the businesses in the city. That's what the city really want to achieve. While it may not be obvious, supporting the arts is a way to achieve that goal.

That's action #1, and the cities are also pursuing separate action #2.

2) ... cities are ... investing millions of dollars in cultural activities ...

This second action is clearly something supportive to the first, which contains the bigger idea. Presumably investing in these culture activities will have a similar effect, and also will have beneficial effects on the whole economy.

The relationship between these two activities is clear in the correct parallelism of (A). The relationship between them is blurred and unclear in (E): choice (E) makes it sound as if the city's goal is investing millions of dollars in something non-essential. That's absolutely illogical and completely absurd from an economics point of view.

Does this make sense?
Mike

#MY10SECONDAPPROACH:
- Means carry only "TO" as a conjunction hence option C,D and E - rejected.( don't even read them )
- Option B changes the meaning - "development economically means development at low costs which is a completely different meaning than what question stem says.

Hence Answer option A

Lest we should have misconceptions about the use of ' to' as a preposition after means, here is what the Free Dictionary says about the various prepositions that may accompany means.

(https://www.thefreedictionary.com/means).

I think the use of parallelism will be a safer route to solve this question.

Hey daagh , have a book from one of GMAT's coaching centres claiming that GMAT prefers"TO" as a conjunction with "Means" , hence went ahead with POE.
your views?

If the book says so and if you believe that the GMAT coaching book is dependable, you please carry on with your belief. Mine is only an additional info.