Expenditures more than the amount

[tankobe]

Expenditures more than the amount set by the executive board must have advanced board approval
1# Expenditures more than the amount set
2# Expenditures more than what is budgeted
when trying to find some example of phrase "more than", i find this sentence in Google.

(1)i know the phrase "Expenditures more than XX $" is ok in GMAT, but i don't know whether "Expenditures more than the amount set by..."--yet "Expenditures more than the amount of XX $" will be wrong-- is OK.

(2) 2# is like a KIND of option that occurs frequently in GAMT, but i am also not sure whether it is ok in this context, regardless of the slight change in meaning.

so, i wish to your opinions about these tough issures.

[RonPurewal]

Expenditures more than the amount set by the executive board must have advanced board approval
1# Expenditures more than the amount set
2# Expenditures more than what is budgeted
when trying to find some example of phrase "more than", i find this sentence in Google.

(1)i know the phrase "Expenditures more than XX $" is ok in GMAT, but i don't know whether "Expenditures more than the amount set by..."--yet "Expenditures more than the amount of XX $" will be wrong-- is OK.

(2) 2# is like a KIND of option that occurs frequently in GAMT, but i am also not sure whether it is ok in this context, regardless of the slight change in meaning.

so, i wish to your opinions about these tough issures.

i'm not sure what sort of answer you're expecting here; this sort of construction depends not only on parallelism, but also on idiomatic usage.

in other words:

1) since this sentence makes a comparison (all instances of more/greater/less/etc. are comparisons), the two items being compared must be parallel.
this isn't really an issue in the current sentence, since all three of the constructions at hand ("expenditures", "the amount set...", and "what is budgeted") refer to financial figures, but this could definitely be an issue in other sentences.

2) the rest of this issue is really just a function of idiomatic usage. in particular, choices between things like "more" and things like "greater" that are not normally prescriptive grammar issues; more commonly, they depend on the specific words that are being used.
i don't write the gmat, so i can't tell you for 100% sure here, but i would strongly suspect that "more than" is not idiomatically allowed to follow "expenditures". instead, you would want to use "greater than".

--

as for #2, since "expenditures" is plural, you could achieve greater cohesion in that version by replacing "what" with a relative pronoun that is also specifically plural:
expenditures greater than those budgeted by...