An Economic Approach to Generalize Findings from Regression-Discontinuity Designs

Nirav Mehta

No 20156, University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP)

Abstract: Regression-discontinuity (RD) designs estimate treatment effects at a cutoff. This paper shows that much can be learned about average treatment effects for the treated (ATT), untreated (ATUT), and population (ATE) if the cutoff was chosen to maximize the gain from treatment, net of costs. The ATT must be positive and the RD estimate bounds the ATT from below and the ATUT from above, implying bounds for the ATE. Optimality of the cutoff rules out constant treatment effects. The treatment effect must be increasing at the cutoff, making cutoff optimality testable. The theoretical results are applied to existing RD studies.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1107&context=economicscibc (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: An Economic Approach to Generalizing Findings from Regression-Discontinuity Designs (2019)
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:uwo:hcuwoc:20156

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://economics.uw ... itting_ordering.html
The price is Paper copy available by mail at a cost of $10.00 Canadian each.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP), Social Science Centre, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().