IELTS Listening: Multiple Choice Pick Two: Nobel Prize Winner in Economics

Here is an audio file from the Voice of America learning English website: Nobel Prize Winner Studied How People Spent Their Money

Before you listen, here are some of the words in the story:

• consumers – n. people who buy and use goods and services
• distribute – v. to choose how much of something (money) to be used for different purposes
• analyze – v. to study something closely and carefully; to learn the nature and relationship of the parts of something
• infer – v. to form an opinion about someone or something based on available evidence
• household – adj. one or more people who live in the same home
• surveys – n. studies; collecting information about a population

Nice if you have it.

(If the above player doesn’t work, try listening here. Or if that doesn’t work, please go directly to the VOA website here to listen)

Listen from 00:00 to 00:17

1. and 2. Besides studying how people spend their money, which two things has he also explored?

• A: how consumption influences the situation we live in.
• B: how to improve our living conditions.
• C: how to avoid poverty.
• D: how our spending habits relate to our lack of wealth.
• E: how spending can affect both poverty conditions and living.

1 …………

2 …………

Listen from 00:18 to 00:56

3. and 4. Besides dealing with how consumers distribute  their spending among different goods, the Nobel committee says his research has mainly dealt with which two other questions:  

• A: how spending can help you save.
• B: spending and saving among the poor
• C: to what extent people consume and invest
• D: analysing happiness and poverty
• E: researching how the poor can become happy

3 ………

4 ………

Listen from 01:42 to 02:25

5. and 6. Mr Deaton paid so much attention to household information because he 

• A: wants to help people individually.
• B: wanted to understand why people behave the way they do.
• C: wanted to find out what things will help people.
• D: wants to predict what people are going to do.
• E: wants to infer the reasons for their behaviour.

5 ……….

6 ……….

Listen from 02:44 to 03:47

7. and 8. At a press conference this week, the Nobel Prize winner said which two things:

• A: he’s happy to be a recognised economist
• B: he’s happy that others pay attention to his research.
• C: poverty will decline in the future.
• D: poverty has been remarkable for the last 20 or 30 years.
• E: he expects poverty to continue to exist.

7 ………..

8 ………..

Answers below the image

Professor Angus Deaton: The winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences

Answers

1. A
2. D
3. C
4. D
5. B
6. C
7. B
8. C