Diamond Enterprises is a store in Apisville that sells specialty luxury items. For several years, Diamond reaped substantial profits and was considering building branch stores in nearby counties. Stibium Industries, for several years the single largest employer in Apisville and the surrounding region, abruptly closed its plant last year, causing widespread unemployment. Only a fraction of the former Stibium workers have found new jobs, and many of these at much lower wages. Early this year, Diamond Enterprises has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing the closure of Stibium as one of the primary causes.

Which of the following inferences is best supported by the passage?


A. Diamond Enterprises would have avoided bankruptcy if it had followed through with the plan to build branch stores during its more prosperous years.

B. Stibium's management team had a corporate account with Diamond Enterprises, and ordered several luxury items used in business meetings and to entertain prospective clients.

C. Diamond's direct competitors, in Apisville and in the surrounding region, are much larger than Diamond, and therefore benefitted substantially from the conditions that arose after Stibium closed.

D. The closure of Stibium resulted in a loss of revenue for Diamond Enterprises.

E. After Stibium Industry closed, Diamond Enterprises was the single largest employer in Apisville.



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The answer is any option that actually links stibium's closure to loss of revenue of Diamond. The closest options to do these are B and D. But B, does not indicate that Stibium's was the only corp account at diamond's hence going with straight forward option . I dont know if the answer is this easy, so I am skeptical that I could be wrong. Experts please chime in.

A. Diamond Enterprises would have avoided bankruptcy if it had followed through with the plan to build branch stores during its more prosperous years.
- Nothing in the argument indicates that building stores could have saved Diamond

B. Stibium's management team had a corporate account with Diamond Enterprises, and ordered several luxury items used in business meetings and to entertain prospective clients.
- this could be correct is the argument had mentioned that stibium was probably the only or biggest corp accounts of Diamond

C. Diamond's direct competitors, in Apisville and in the surrounding region, are much larger than Diamond, and therefore benefitted substantially from the conditions that arose after Stibium closed.
- not relevant

D. The closure of Stibium resulted in a loss of revenue for Diamond
- correct

E. After Stibium Industry closed, Diamond Enterprises was the single largest employer in Apisville.
- this wouldn't explain the bankruptcy
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Pretty straight question. Although there are two close options to contend for correct answer, one beats the other on the ground of intensity of impact. The weaker option had some assumptions to make it more valuable or to make considerable. The other choice (which I belive is the correct answer) has direct and severe dependency on the conclusion and hence is the right answer.

Thanks,

Easy one. For Inference questions, we need to pick a "must be true" option. The closest option to the correct option qualifies for "could be true".

This is bad! None of the answer choices seems to be correct to me

The fight is between B and D-
B: Too specific. May or may not be true. Hence cant infer (but this can definitely be a solid strengthener)
D: Introduces causality. How can i say that X resulted in Y just because X happened before Y !?! Hence cant infer

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Keep a clean order of the facts that the argument gives you, and you will find the answer easily.

At times obviousness of answer choices doesnt make a question tough but the length of a passage surely does. You are right that its starightfwd but it takes at least 1 minute to figure out what the passage says and demands, which makes it 600-700

Hope it helps

Official Explanation

The credited answer is (D). We know Diamond had high profits before Stibium closed, and we know it was close to bankruptcy after Stibium closed, citing Stibum's closure as one of the primary causes. There, in some way, as a result of Stibium closing, Diamond lost revenue. Consider the opposite of (D): If Stibium closed, and that caused no revenue loss for Diamond, then how on earth could Diamond cite the closure of Stibium as one of the causes of its plummet from high profits to bankruptcy? The opposite of (D) is a scenario that makes no sense, so (D) is an unavoidable inference, very well supported.

Choice (A) is a tempting answer. Would branches of other Diamond stores in other towns have reaped profits, enough to avoid the bankruptcy mentioned? Perhaps. That's certainly a plausible possibility, but we don't know for sure. If we don't know for sure, it's not a good inference. (A) is incorrect.

Choice (B) is way too specific in the kind of assumptions it makes. It seems that Diamond was getting some kind of revenue from Stibium, but was it the management buying perks? or rank-and-file workers buying treats for themselves? We don't know. Anything that spins a highly specific story is too much to infer strictly from the information in the prompt. (B) is incorrect.

Choice (C) makes too many assumptions --- does this specialty store Diamond have direct competitors in the region? if so, are these competitors larger? was "being larger" an advantage in the economic conditions that resulted from Stibium's closure? There are too many things we don't know, so we can draw a clear inference. (C) is incorrect.

Choice (E) is entirely unfounded. We have no idea how big Diamond is, and we have no idea what other employers Apisville might have. (E) is incorrect.

(D) is by far the best answer.
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