2016考研英语二真题完形填空答案解析

2016英语二的完形填空文章来源于Harvard Business Review《哈佛商业评论》，原文的标题为Companies In Happy Cities Invest More For The Long Term，发表时间是：06/10/2015。文章中没有出现太多高难度词汇，内容也较好理解，整体难度较小。

Happy people work differently. They're more productive, more creative, and willing to take greater risks. And new research suggests that happiness might influence how firms work, too.

Companies located in places with happier people invest more, according to a recent paper by Tuugi Chuluun of Loyola University Maryland and Carol Graham of Brookings. In particular, firms in happy places spend more on R&D. That's because happiness, they argue, is linked to the kind of longer term thinking necessary for making investments for the future.

Chuluun and Graham wanted to know if the optimism and proclivity for risk-taking that come with happiness would change the way companies invested. So they compared U.S. cities' average happiness, as measured by Gallup polling, with the investment activity of publicly traded firms in those areas. (Gallup asks respondents to evaluate their lives from zero to 10, with 10 representing the "best possible life.")

Sure enough, firms' investment and R&D intensity were correlated with the happiness of the area in which they were headquartered (view maps of average?happiness, investment, and R&D here). But is it really happiness that's linked to investment, or could something else about happier cities explain why firms there spend more on R&D? To find out, the researchers controlled for various factors that might make firms more likely to invest - like size, industry, and sales - and for indicators that a place was desirable to live in, like growth in wages or population. The link between happiness and investment generally held even after accounting for these things (though more so for R&D than for other investments).

The correlation between happiness and investment was particularly strong for younger firms, which the authors attribute to "less codified decision making process" and the possible presence of "younger and less experienced managers who are more likely to be influenced by sentiment.'" The relationship was also stronger in places where happiness was spread more equally. Firms seem to invest more in places where most people are relatively happy, rather than in places with happiness "inequality, or large gaps in the distribution of well-being."

While this doesn't prove that happiness causes firms to invest more or to take a longer-term view, the authors believe it at least hints at that possibility. It's not hard to imagine that local culture and sentiment would help shape how executives think about the future. Just ask anyone who's spent time in Silicon Valley. "It surely seems plausible that [happy people] would be more forward-thinking [and] creative and lean towards R&D more than the average," said Graham.

参考答案：

C 1. [C] how

B 2. [B] In particular

D 3. [D] necessary

C 4. [C] optimism

D 5. [D] change

B 6. [B] measured

A 7. [A] Sure

D 8. [D] headquartered

A 9. [A] explain

B 10. [B] factors

A 11. [A] desirable

C 12. [C]emerged

A 13. [A] attribute

D 14. [D]experienced

A 15. [A] thus

D 16. [D] equally

C 17. [C] While

C 18. [C] hints

A 19. [A] shape

B 20. [B] lean towards