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Arel-Bundock, Blais and Dassonneville (2018, ABD hereafter) offer an unusual critique of our 12 article, Benchmarking across Borders. They find no methodological flaws, produce identical 13 empirical results and concede that their proposed specification (Model 5) is mathematically 14 identical to that used in Kayser and Peress (2012, KP hereafter). ABD make two claims: (1) that 15 their preferred specification is an innovation that improves interpretation and (2) that the 16 empirical evidence presented in KP does not support benchmarking. The first is unpersuasive 17 and the second depends on a selective reading of the evidence. We address these issues below and 18 update the individual-level dataset from KP to increase statistical power, finding additional 19 evidence of benchmarking.
Can voters learn what they need to learn to hold governments accountable for theeconomy through news coverage? Employing the first large-scale cross-nationaldataset of media coverage of the economy—over 2 million machine-coded articlesrelated to three economic indicators in 32 mainstream newspapers, one left-wingand one right-wing, in 16 developed countries and six languages—we investigatemedia coverage of the economy that bears implications for electoral accountabilityand partisan advantage. We find that the tone of most mainstream newspaperstracks the economy faithfully, although the frequency of coverage increases withnegative outcomes. While we find some evidence for partisan bias in tone forgrowth headlines and in frequency of coverage for unemployment articles, itssubstantive magnitude is diminutive. Mainstream newspaper coverage providesvoters with largely accurate information.