2023 ASRJC H2 Econs Prelim Paper 1 QP

1 © ASRJC Economics Department 9570/01/JC2 Prelim/2023 [Turn Over ECONOMICS 9570/01 Paper 1 29 August 2023 Additional Materials: Answer Booklet 2 hours 30 mins READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST An answer booklet will be provided with this question paper. You should follow the instructions on the front cover of the answer booklet. If you ne ed additional answer booklets, ask the invigilator for a continuation booklet. Please start your answer to each question on a fresh page of the answer booklet. Answer all questions. The number of marks is given in brackets [ ] at the end of each question or part question. This document consists of 9 printed pages and 3 blank pages. ANDERSON SERANGOON JUNIOR COLLEGE JC2 PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION Higher 2

2 © ASRJC Economics Department 9570/01/JC2 Prelim/2023 [Turn Over Answer all questions Question 1: Big Technology Firms and the COVID-19 Pandemic Figure 1: Amazon’s sales revenue vs profit Source: Vox.com, accessed 2 August 2023 Extract 1: How Big Technology* won the pandemic In the last year, the five Big Technology superpowers — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook (now Meta) — had combined revenue of m ore than US$1.2 trillion. The pandemic has made the technology giants and their bosses unfathomably rich. Apple has so much extra cash that it is spending an additional US$90 billion to buy its own stock, nearly the equivalent of Kenya’s gross domestic product. Of th e 10 richest people in the world, eight made their fortunes from technology companies. The man at the top, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, alone is worth more than one-and-a-half Goldman Sachs. How did this happen? The pandemic created an econom y that benefited some people and industries, including in technology, even as it battered others. In the last year of crisis, people and businesses had even greater demand for what the technology giants were selling. Americans’ love of home shopping became a safety ne cessity for some people. Families bought iPads and Macs as work and school went virtual. Any business that still had money to spend on marketing spent it on Google, Facebook, or Amazon. Companies might have cut back in other areas, but they bought software from Microsoft and Amazon. However, as with other industries, technology is also suffering from a supply chain crisis. This started with the pandemic causing the global shutdo wn in 2020, a fire that shut down the warehouse of Japan’s major producer of microchips, and an unusual and powerful snowstorm In Texas that shut down all Intel microchip production for days. These events started a domino effect that we see affecting the supply chain throughout almost all technology industries. Source: The New York Times, 12 October 2021 and IBM.com, 10 November 2021 *The Big Technolo