Including covariates in the regression discontinuity design

Markus Frölich () and Martin Huber

No 489, FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland

Abstract: This paper proposes a fully nonparametric kernel method to account for observed covariates in regression discontinuity designs (RDD), which may increase precision of treatment effect estimation. It is shown that conditioning on covariates reduces the asymptotic variance and allows estimating the treatment effect at the rate of one-dimensional nonparametric regression, irrespective of the dimension of the continuously distributed elements in the conditioning set. Furthermore, the proposed method may decrease bias and restore identification by controlling for discontinuities in the covariate distribution at the discontinuity threshold, provided that all relevant discontinuously distributed variables are controlled for. To illustrate the estimation approach and its properties, we provide a simulation study and an empirical application to an Austrian labor market reform.

Keywords: Treatment effect; causal effect; complier; LATE; nonparametric regression; endogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 C14 C21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2017-11-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doc.rero.ch/record/305843/files/WP_SES_489.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Including Covariates in the Regression Discontinuity Design (2019)
Working Paper: Including Covariates in the Regression Discontinuity Design (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fri:fribow:fribow00489

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://doc.rero.ch/record/305843

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland Bd de Pérolles 90, CH-1700 Fribourg. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mustapha Obbad ().