Some economists contend that the way markets react to financial news a

KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

Step 1: Read the Original Sentence Carefully, Looking for Errors
Whenever a sentence contains an underlined verb, we must be sure to check whether it agrees with
its subject. In this sentence, the verb “are based” is plural, but its subject, “way,” is singular, so
we have a subject-verb agreement error. Moreover, the words “as much” are part of the idiomatic
phrase “as much . . . as,” but this sentence instead uses “as much . . . than.” The correct answer will
fix both mistakes without introducing any new errors.

Step 2: Scan and Group the Answer Choices
(A) and (B) retain the plural verb phrase “are based.” (C) and (D) instead use the singular “is based.”
(E) uses “has been based.”

Step 3: Eliminate Choices Until Only One Remains
We can eliminate (A) and (B) because we know that the plural verb is incorrect. (E) has a singular
verb, but it changes the tense and therefore the meaning of the sentence, so we can rule out
(E) as well. (C) and (D) both correctly use the present tense singular “is based.” However, choice
(C) does not correct the “as much . . . than” error. The correct answer is (D), which corrects “as much
. . . than” to “as much . . . as” and also uses the correct verb form.