A Test for Treatment Heterogeneity under a Distributional Difference-in-Difference Framework

Satarupa Bhattacharjee, Bing Li and Lingzhou Xue

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Abstract: We develop a novel distributional Difference-in-Differences (DiD) framework to capture treatment heterogeneity across outcome distributions. By leveraging optimal transport, we use the control group to estimate the untreated distributional drift from the pre- to post-treatment period and apply it to the treated group's pre-treatment baseline, constructing a counterfactual distribution under the assumption of no treatment effect. We frame the null hypothesis as a distributional equality between the transported counterfactual distribution and the observed treated post-treatment distribution, and test it using a maximum mean discrepancy statistic in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS). The resulting nonparametric omnibus test is sensitive to changes in location, scale, shape, and tail behavior. Under the null, we derive the asymptotic Gaussian quadratic-form limit of the test statistic, while under local alternatives, we provide a unified characterization of power that establishes its Pitman local power and moderate-deviation consistency. Our theory reveals how detectability is shaped by the interaction between transport-induced drift and RKHS geometry. Simulations and an application to the Card--Krueger minimum-wage data demonstrate that the proposed method identifies key distributional treatment effects missed by classical mean-based DiD.

Date: 2026-06
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