Benchmarking across Borders: An Update and Response

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