Two years ago, officials in Distropia passed landmark

"As long as" is an introduction for a requirement. Example: You can stay at the hotel as long as you pay your rent

I chose C, because it tell us that a decrease in demand isn't the only reason for the lower prices. An increase in supply or cheaper production could be other reasons for this phenonomen.

Hi chetan,

I am not able to fully grasp the last bit of the question. Could you please elaborate a bit more?

mikemcgarry

Would be glad if you could help out

Dear rahulkashyap

I'm happy to respond.

First of all, I don't have the highest opinion of this question. This is several notches harder than anything the GMAT will give you. Also, the nation of Distropia is appropriate fictional, but Estonia is a real place, and that respected member of the EU and NATO conceivably could be offended by the implications of this question.

The phrase "as long as" is a way to add, at the end of a sentence, an additional condition that guarantees some statement to be true. The added condition is often an afterthought, and often is something that most people would take for granted already. For example,
During a full moon, moonlight illuminates the landscape from dusk to dawn, as long as the sky is not too cloudy.
With proper antibiotics, a person with scarlet fever will make a full recovery, as long as he isn't run over by a car.
An older automobile with a fully rebuilt engine will run as reliably and powerful as when it was new, as long as it has gas.

This is the sense in which it is used in this question. Here's the final sentence with version (C) ending:
If the plan had been successful, the street price for most pirated DVDs in the country’s major cities would not have dropped as it did over the past two years, as long as the drop in the street price for most pirated DVDs was not caused solely by a decrease in demand for those DVDs.

That's a very complicated sentence, which conveys two important facts.
1) The "street price for most pirated DVDs in the country’s major cities" actually dropped.
2) If the legislation had been successful, the street price wouldn't have dropped--it would have gone up.

In understanding this much, it is essential to understand the Law of Supply and Demand. You absolutely have to know this basic economics fact inside-out.

At the beginning of the prompt, two years ago, there was a flood of this pirated DVDs coming in. This implies that that both the supply and the demand were high, so the price was kept reasonably low by this equilibrium. What officials in Distropia hoped was that they would choke off the supply---with low supply and similar demand, presumably the price would skyrocket. In practice, the pirated DVDs would have been much more expensive than the legitimate ones, and so people would have bought the legitimate ones. The fact that the price went further down shows what a complete disaster the legislation was: rather than solve the problem, this legislation made the problem worse!

Once again, the "as long as" phrase has two characteristics:
1) it's something relatively obvious and expected
2) it's further guarantees the truth of the main statement.

The main statement is that "If the plan had been successful, the street price for most pirated DVDs in the country’s major cities would not have dropped."
Again, if the plan had been successful, the supply of these illegal pirate DVDs would have dwindled to almost nothing, and with the same demand, the price would have been very high.
This is true "as long as the drop in the street price for most pirated DVDs was not caused solely by a decrease in demand for those DVDs"--that is, during the time that supply was dropping, demand also dropped, then this could keep the supply low. We certainly wouldn't expect the demand to drop: people like cheap DVDs, so why would they suddenly stop liking them? Thus, this statement fulfills all the requirements of a condition framed in an "as long as" clause.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Find out the option which satisfies the following:

The price could be dropped if...

C. Demand falls. Correct.
D. Not. Because it says the opposite. Supply doesn't increase.

Very tough indeed to get the gist.

What you said makes perfect sense for why C is right. We need to rule out another reason the price would not have dropped. The demand decreasing would have caused the price to drop, thus ruling it out makes C a good answer.

But what about D? Similar reasoning, increase in domestic production (supply) would have also caused the price to drop. Thus ruling that option out seems it would be just as valuable. But it is not correct? I don't see why.




In short, price dropping can be caused by either demand decreasing or supply increasing. C tackled demand increasing, while D tackled supply increasing. I don't see how 1 is more right/wrong than the other.

C is the correct choice. According, to me D can be eliminated for the following reason -

D says that the price decreased because supply increased. But, one thing one needs to know, that even if supply has increased, we cannot predict anything regarding the fall or rise in price, because the premises don't give us any information regarding demand. It is important to know that is the demand in pace with supply ? If yes, then price remains constant. If demand increases more then with previous assumed supply, price will increase and vice versa. Thus, here we know only about the supply and nothing about the demand. Thus, D cannot be the answer. C talks about the demand, taking into consideration the constant supply of DVD'S as before, C is the most appropriate answer.

Sent from my Lenovo K53a48 using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

Similar logic can be applied to eliminate c too.....C says that demand reduced but what if the supply at the same time got reduced????

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