tricky: past perfect vs simple pas

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tacosychelas: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 13; Joined: Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:06 pm; Followed by:1 members

tricky: past perfect vs simple pas

by tacosychelas » Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:10 pm

The reports from the Department of Commerce indicated that the economy had grown at an annual rate much higher than most economists had predicted.
A) had predicted.
B) predicted

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:10 pm

Stuart@KaplanGMAT: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 3225; Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:40 pm; Location: Toronto; Thanked: 1710 times; Followed by:614 members; GMAT Score:800

Re: tricky: past perfect vs simple pas

by Stuart@KaplanGMAT » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:00 pm

tacosychelas wrote:The reports from the Department of Commerce indicated that the economy had grown at an annual rate much higher than most economists had predicted.
A) had predicted.
B) predicted

We use the past perfect when we need to put an event two steps into the past.

In this sentence, the reports "indicated", which is already the past tense. So, we need to decide if the economists made their predictions before the reports, during the reports or after the reports.

The reports were written after the economists made their predictions, so the predictions need to be in a tense earlier than the simple past: choose (a) had predicted.