The true danger in the central bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy

The true danger in the central bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy is not that its actions will

having trouble in this question. I see its here, and not sure how then we can use they in the second part. Also hard to tell they are referring to different things.

Its refer to central bank

Correct idiomatic usage is : Not X but Y

actions is plural so it will require a plural Verb , only (C) and (E) have plural pronnoun " They "

However in (E) we have the following issues -



So, among (C) and (E) , (C) looks good !!

samichange has provided us with a detailed explanation, however we will be more than happy to provide further explaination.

Plz feel free to revert in case of ay doubt !!

How can first its in non underlined portion refer to Central Bank (its in possessive form). ?

There is no problem with the use of Its when it is referring to a singular antecedent.

Here in this case its is clearly referring to the central bank.

The true danger in the central bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy is not that its actions will ...

Here possessive pronoun 'its' is referring to possessive noun central bank’s. Possessive nouns can refer to possessive as well as non-possessive ones(subject or object pronouns). The only rule that should be remembered is that possessive nouns cannot be the antecedent of a non-possessive pronoun. For ex. following sentence is wrong:

Central bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy are not enough as it is not taking into account all the stakeholders in the economy.

Here it(subject or personal pronoun) should have referred to noun Central Bank and not possessive pronoun Central Bank's.

Thanks all. I did a similar MGMAT CAT question on similar concept. They said its unlikely this concept will be tested on actual gmat but I think they did.

Got the concept now.

Note the all-important pronoun decision point here – “it” in A, B, and D and “they” in C and E. Because the actions are what will either succeed or fail in reviving the economy, and because of the parallel structure “not that its actions will ____ but that they will_____”, the correct pronoun must be “they”. And choices B, D, and E make another subtle but significant error – by using the present tense “…and strain,” these sentences make “strain” parallel to “revive.” This means that the sentence reads “(the actions) will fail to revive and (fail to) strain,” which is illogical, as the success of the actions is to do only one of those things (revive) and its failure to do so will cause the strain. To say that it would fail to do both verbs, revive and strain, is illogical as the two actions are essentially opposite. Only choice C, which uses the proper pronoun “they” and the proper verb usage “straining” (as a modifier) logically conveys the meaning of the sentence, so choice C is correct.

Not sure I agree with this question at all.

By the same logic that users above have eliminated A, they could have eliminated C. In fact it makes less sense to me to use "they" for a possessive collective noun.

They is reffering to "its actions" no to the efforts.

We definitely have to cut things down to C or E. "They" refers to actions, and we definitely need a plural pronoun for that. It doesn't work to say that "it" (the bank) will fail to revive the economy when we are specifically criticizing the plans. E is out for the modifier issue mentioned above. It also demonstrates false parallelism by making "fail" and "strain" parallel, when the latter is the result of the former.

However, there is a problem with all five answers. They all say that there is little evidence of inflation, but this doesn't make sense, since inflation is something people are predicting will happen, not something that is supposed to have happened already. We should be saying that there is little evidence that the actions will result in inflation. We could do that with a modifier along the lines of "an assertion for which there is little evidence."

Once the choices with pronoun errors are eliminated, we are left with C & E. Of the two, C seems better worded.

After reading complete thread, my opinion to this problem is that
Though it is incorrect to use non-possessive pronoun for possessive antecedent, we can use non-possessive pronoun for possessive pronoun if meaning is clear and there is no ambiguity. Suppose in "it will fail to revive..."
Central bank will fail to revive...Not the intended meaning.
Central bank's actions will fail to revive... Correct as we place pronoun according to logical antecedent which is currently residing in parallel phrase.
Central bank's efforts will fail to revive...ambiguous.

Here we are using idiom Not X but Y. So subject pronoun in Y must be according to logical antecedent in X.

Meaning: The main effect of the efforts of stimulating the economy is - the efforts will fail to revive the economy. This failure will strain investor confidence. The straining will in turn strain the financial markets.

(A) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that it will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure, straining investor confidence and, in the process, the financial markets
- "it" refers to "efforts" - Subject- pronoun error.
- "straining" presents the result of failure to revive the economy. The doer "efforts" is same for "failure" and "straining" - Use of "verb-ing" is correct
- Wrong

(B) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that it will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure and strain investor confidence, and in the process the financial markets
- Repeats the "it" error
- Meaning error - because of the use of connector "and" the sentence now conveys the meaning - the efforts will not fail to revive the economy and fail to strain investor confidence
- Wrong

(C) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that they will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure, straining investor confidence and, in the process, the financial markets
- "they" correctly refers to "efforts"
- Use of "straining" is correct
- Correct

(D) have the result of inflation—of which there is little evidence—but also that it will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure and strain investor confidence and, in the process, the financial markets
- Incorrect use of "it"
- Meaning error because of the use of "and"
- Wrong

(E) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that they will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure and strain investor confidence, which will in the process strain the financial markets
- While this option correctly uses the pronoun "they" instead of "it", the sentence changes the meaning of the sentence by using "and" instead of the"verb-ing" modifier.
- Wrong

Dear Friends,

Here is a detailed explanation to this question-



Choice A: This answer choice incorrectly uses the singular pronoun "it" to refer to the plural noun "efforts". Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice B: This answer choice repeats the subject-verb disagreement found in Option A. Additionally, this answer choice suffers from a meaning error; due to the use of the conjunction "and" in the phrase "fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure and strain investor confidence", this answer choice implies that the central bank's efforts will fail to accomplish two goals - reviving the economy and straining investor confidence. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice C: This answer choice conveys the intended meaning of the sentence and maintains subject-verb agreement. Thus, this answer choice is correct.

Choice D: This answer choice repeats the errors found in Option B. Furthermore, the phrase "have the result of inflation" is needlessly wordy and renders this answer choice awkward. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Choice E: This answer choice repeats the error related to the use of "and", found in Options B and D. Thus, this answer choice is incorrect.

Hence, C is the best answer choice.

All the best!
Experts' Global Team

The true danger in the central bank’s efforts to stimulate the economy is not that its actions will result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that it will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure, straining investor confidence and, in the process, the financial markets.

(A) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that it will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure, straining investor confidence and, in the process, the financial markets

-- SV agreement error. We need 'they' instead of 'it' to refer to actions.

(B) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that it will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure and strain investor confidence, and in the process the financial markets

-- SV agreement error. We need 'they' instead of 'it' to refer to actions.

(C) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that they will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure, straining investor confidence and, in the process, the financial markets

-- Looks good. Keep.

(D) have the result of inflation—of which there is little evidence—but also that it will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure and strain investor confidence and, in the process, the financial markets

-- SV agreement error. We need 'they' instead of 'it' to refer to actions.

(E) result in inflation—of which there is little evidence—but that they will fail to revive the economy by any substantial measure and strain investor confidence, which will in the process strain the financial markets

-- Parallelism error. This sentence says that the economy will 'fail to strain investor confidence', which is non-sensical.

Answer is C.

"It" correctly refers to the central bank. But the central bank cannot revive the economy. It's their efforts that revive the economy. Thus for "efforts", we have to use "they".

egmat, your take?

Not an expert here, but "they" actually refers to "actions" here as the sentence describes what the actions are doing and not the efforts. I agree that we would use "they" for both, actions and efforts.