Identify the Question Stem: The question asks what can be logically concluded from the passage, so this is an Inference question.
Deconstruct the Argument: The argument provides a series of facts about two countries in the year 2010.
Country X: 10% of world's GDP; voting share increased from less than 3% to 4.4%
Country Y: 4% of world's GDP; voting share decreased from 4.3% to 3.8%
Pause and State the Goal: On Inference questions, the argument will provide a series of facts and the correct answer will be something that can be definitively proven from at least some of those facts. Trap answers will often conclude something that might be true but that cannot be definitively proven from the facts given in the argument. What can be definitively concluded from the given facts?
Work from Wrong to Right:
(A) This is so tempting! But the argument does not state that voting share is determined by the country's share of GDP. It could be based on anything. So the fact that Country X's voting share increased does not necessarily mean that its share of GDP also increased.
(B) CORRECT. In 2010 Country X represented 10% of the world's GDP and had a voting share of 4.4%. Country Y represented 4% of the world's GDP and had a voting share of 3.8%. If voting share were directly proportional to GDP, then Country X's voting share should have been more than twice as great as Country Y's voting share. It was not, so it must be the case that voting share is not directly proportional to share of GDP.
(C) Careful! It's true that Country X's voting share increased, while Country Y's decreased, but only one data point is given about GDP, so it's unclear whether that figure was increasing or decreasing for either country. Further, the argument doesn't state that voting share was based on GDP, so the fact that the voting share changed as it did does not necessarily imply anything about each country's share of GDP.
(D) If voting share was supposed to be based on share of GDP, then Country X might have reason to be upset about the change in its share, as Country Y seems to have had proportionally more voting rights than it should have based on its share of GDP. But the argument doesn't indicate how voting share was calculated, nor does it provide any evidence to suggest how either country felt about its share.
(E) The argument indicates that voting shares for these two countries were changed in 2010 but it doesn't indicate how the new figures were determined. Because the GDP data is given only for 2010, not for prior years, it's not possible to conclude anything about whether prior-year GDP share had any impact on current-year voting shares.
The correct answer is (B).
