Bankruptcy---assumption

The correct answer in my opinion is C. C is a classic Protect against Weakeners assumption choice.

The author in this question argues that the economy is "not" entering a phase of prosperity because of 2 reasons:

1) The number of people filing for bankruptcy has increased
2) Bankruptcy lawyers report that they are busier than they have been in years

While making this conclusion, he makes 2 assumptions:

1. "Bankruptcy filings are a better indicator of the economy enter growth phase than unemployment and productivity rates are."
2. "There is no alternate reason (unrelated to the economy) why the bankruptcy filings are higher." Some examples of alternate reasoning could be

--- the government has passed on a new legislation that allows people to file for Bankruptcy for situations that they were not allowed to do so earlier
--- the government makes changes in the Bankruptcy regulation that makes filing easier so that people who preciously did not consider filing for bankruptcy are now filing for the same.
--- for some reason the number of bankruptcy lawyers has decreased significantly.

Choice C, is similarly worded to assumption 2 and is the correct answer.


Choice D states that the number of lawyers have increased. It is a strengthener because it strengthens author's position that in-spite of a greater number of lawyers. However, this does not have to be true for the argument to hold true. Lets apply the negation test to prove this point.

Negating choice D we get, the number of bankruptcy lawyers has "not" increased. -- This does not necessarily mean that the number of bankruptcy lawyers has decreased. The number of bankruptcy lawyers could also stay the same and the author's argument holds true even if the number of lawyers remain the same. Therefore this choice does not pass the negation test.

For e-gmat customers, both the negation test and the "protect against weakeners" assumption types are covered in the assumption concept file. A similar example along with multiple exercise problems are there in the assumption application file.