Testing treatment effect heterogeneity in regression discontinuity designs

Yu-Chin Hsu and Shu Shen

Journal of Econometrics, 2019, vol. 208, issue 2, 468-486

Abstract: Treatment effect heterogeneity is frequently studied in regression discontinuity (RD) applications. This paper proposes, under the RD setup, formal tests for treatment effect heterogeneity among individuals with different observed pre-treatment characteristics. The proposed tests study whether a policy treatment (1) is beneficial for at least some subpopulations defined by pre-treatment covariate values, (2) has any impact on at least some subpopulations, and (3) has a heterogeneous impact across subpopulations. The empirical section applies the tests to study the impact of attending a better high school and discovers interesting patterns of treatment effect heterogeneity neglected by previous studies.

Keywords: Sharp regression discontinuity; Fuzzy regression discontinuity; Treatment effect heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304407618301982
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:econom:v:208:y:2019:i:2:p:468-486

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2018.10.004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Econometrics is currently edited by T. Amemiya, A. R. Gallant, J. F. Geweke, C. Hsiao and P. M. Robinson

More articles in Journal of Econometrics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().