凡是搞计量经济的，都关注这个号了
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所有计量经济圈方法论丛的code程序, 宏微观数据库和各种软件都放在社群里.欢迎到计量经济圈社群交流访问.
上图为“coronavirus”在世界范围内谷歌搜索趋势.
前些日，咱们圈子引荐了①“实证研究中用到的200篇文章, 社科学者常备toolkit”、②实证文章写作常用到的50篇名家经验帖, 学者必读系列、③过去10年AER上关于中国主题的Articles专辑、④AEA公布2017-19年度最受关注的十大研究话题, 给你的选题方向，受到各位学者欢迎和热议，很多博士生导师纷纷推荐给指导的学生参阅。
继上次，腾讯公司相关部门与因果推断研究小组开展了还算友好的交流后（“BATJ巨头急需大批经济学博士, 望奔走相告”），最近，阿里巴巴相关部门人员也希望在因果推断研究小组交流访问（因果推断研究小组惊动了阿里巴巴！）。经济学博士在BATJ公司有啥用呢? 难不成比IT程序员还有能耐，正如上文所讲，因果推断在将来很长一段时间里都是科技公司和社科学者使用的主流方法。我们会一如既往地在小组和社群探讨主流的因果推断方法，同时也欢迎大型科技公司与咱们学者保持更紧密的互动。
之前，咱们小组引荐了1.断点回归设计RDD分类与操作案例，2.RDD断点回归, Stata程序百科全书式的宝典，3.断点回归设计的前沿研究现状, RDD，4.断点回归设计什么鬼？且听哈佛客解析，5.断点回归和读者的提问解答，6.断点回归设计RDD全面讲解, 教育领域用者众多，7.没有工具变量、断点和随机冲击，也可以推断归因，8.找不到IV, RD和DID该怎么办? 这有一种备选方法，9.2卷RDD断点回归使用手册, 含Stata和R软件操作流程，10.DID, 合成控制, 匹配, RDD四种方法比较, 适用范围和特征，11.安神+克拉克奖得主的RDD论文, 断点回归设计，12.伊斯兰政府到底对妇女友不友好？RDD经典文献，13.PSM,RDD,Heckman,Panel模型的操作程序，14.RDD经典文献, RDD模型有效性稳健性检验，15.2019年发表在JDE上的有趣文章, 计量方法最新趋势
与合成控制法（关于合成控制法SCM的33篇精选Articles专辑！）和双重差分法一样（关于双重差分法DID的32篇精选Articles专辑！），断点回归设计RDD也是当下非常流行的因果推断方法，在英文和中文顶刊中频繁出现。基于此，咱们小组引荐100篇使用断点回归设计RDD做实证研究的社科文章，感兴趣的学者可以在社群下载交流和讨论。下面每一篇文章都值得年轻学者在新型肺炎期间认真研习，毕竟每个个体在特殊时期都有自己的角色和相应责任。若实在想要关注新型肺炎，作为一个专业型学者可以看以下四篇文章：1.关于2019-nCoV, 各中外新闻机构的第一篇报道及时间线，2.关于2019-nCoV, 中国学者已发表了高达50篇期刊文章！，3.关于武汉冠状病毒, 最新中英文期刊上的文章都在这里，4.SARS病毒在中国媒体, 经济, 社会等领域留下的遗产专辑！5.2019年国内和国际重要(学术)事件分类, 学者不可不知。
Ahn, T. (2014). "A regression discontinuity analysis of graduation standards and their impact on students’ academic trajectories." Economics of Education Review 38: 64-75.
In 2006, North Carolina put in place high school exit standards requiring students to pass a series of high-stakes exams across several years. I use a regression discontinuity (RD) approach to analyze whether passing or failing one of these exams (Algebra I) impacts a student's decision between choosing a more rigorous college-preparatory math curriculum and an easier ‘career’ track math curriculum. I find a 5 percentage point gap in the probability of selecting the rigorous curriculum between 9th grade students who just passed and those who just failed the exam. RD results across two years (one year in which the graduation standards were not in place) suggest that the discontinuity arose due to fewer students opting into the college track as a result of the exam results.
Ahn, T. (2018). "Assessing the effects of reemployment bonuses on job search: A regression discontinuity approach." Journal of Public Economics 165: 82-100.
This study examines the impacts of reemployment bonuses, that is, the incentive payments to unemployment insurance (UI) recipients who find a job within a specified period, using Korean data. A sharp discontinuity in treatment assignment at age 55 identifies the effect of increased reemployment bonuses on unemployment duration and on subsequent job duration. The results indicate that increases in the reemployment bonus boost the job-finding hazards of UI claimants early in their unemployment spells during the bonus qualification period and significantly shorten the duration of UI spells by 0.16 to 0.42 months (0.68 to 1.82 weeks). In addition, employment stability is not significantly affected by an increased bonus, which implies no negative influence of the bonus on subsequent job match quality. The simulated estimates show that the increase in tax revenue and the decrease in UI benefit payment caused by the behavioral response of UI recipients are large enough to offset the increased cost of the reemployment bonus.
Almeida, H., et al. (2016). "The real effects of share repurchases." Journal of Financial Economics 119(1): 168-185.
We employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the real effects of share repurchases on other firm outcomes. The probability of share repurchases that increase earnings per share (EPS) is sharply higher for firms that would have just missed the EPS forecast in the absence of the repurchase, when compared with firms that “just beat” the EPS forecast. We use this discontinuity to show that EPS-motivated repurchases are associated with reductions in employment and investment, and a decrease in cash holdings. Our evidence suggests that managers are willing to trade off investments and employment for stock repurchases that allow them to meet analyst EPS forecasts.
Babu, S. C., et al. (2017). Chapter 13 - Economics of School Nutrition: An Application of Regression Discontinuity. Nutrition Economics. S. C. Babu, S. N. Gajanan and J. A. Hallam. San Diego, Academic Press: 257-277.
This chapter explores another set of nutritional interventions through school feeding programs. School feeding programs help not only to reduce hunger among school children, but also to increase enrollment and educational outcomes. Such multi-objective programs require bringing nutrition and education communities together to develop and implement the nutrition interventions.
Balthrop, A. T. and K. E. Schnier (2016). "A regression discontinuity approach to measuring the effectiveness of oil and natural gas regulation to address the common-pool externality." Resource and Energy Economics 44: 118-138.
Oil and natural gas reservoirs typically span multiple productive leases so that no owner has rights to the entire stock of resource, resulting in production externalities. Previous literature has examined the effectiveness of government regulation in Texas and Oklahoma in abating these externalities, finding Oklahoma to be more successful in unifying common pools and securing property rights. Using regression discontinuity design, we quantify the impact of regulatory difference between the two states. We find that Oklahoma produces an average of 3361 more barrels of oil over the life of a well, relative to Texas. Given the maturity of the fields in question, the result underscores the continuing importance of addressing common pool externalities even after the primary phase of recovery has largely been completed.
Baltrunaite, A., et al. (2019). "Let the voters choose women." Journal of Public Economics 180: 104085.
We study the effectiveness of a novel measure to reduce gender gaps in political empowerment: double preference voting conditioned on gender, coupled with gender quotas on candidate lists. This policy was introduced in 2012 in Italian municipal elections. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the share of female councilors rises by 18 percentage points. The result is mainly driven by an increase in preference votes cast for female candidates, suggesting a salient role of double preference voting. We also detect changes in voters' behavior in casting preferences in higher level elections, suggesting the presence of spill-over effects of the double preference voting policy.
Bargain, O. and K. Doorley (2011). "Caught in the trap? Welfare's disincentive and the labor supply of single men." Journal of Public Economics 95(9): 1096-1110.
Youth unemployment is particularly large in many industrialized countries and has dramatic consequences in both the short and long-term. While there is abundant evidence about the labor supply of married women and single mothers, little is known about how young (childless) singles react to financial incentives. The French minimum income (Revenu Minimum d'Insertion, RMI), often accused of generating strong disincentives to work, offers a natural setting to study this question since childless single individuals, primarily males, constitute the core group of recipients. Exploiting the fact that childless adults under age 25 are not eligible for this program, we conduct a regression discontinuity analysis using French Census data. We find that the RMI reduces the participation of uneducated single men by 7–10% at age 25. We conduct an extensive robustness check and discuss the implications of our results for youth unemployment and current policy developments.
Barrera-Osorio, F. and H. Bayona-Rodríguez (2019). "Signaling or better human capital: Evidence from Colombia." Economics of Education Review 70: 20-34.
We use data from the admissions process from a highly selective private university in Colombia to analyze the impact of prestigious university attendance on the education trajectory and labor market outcomes of individuals. The university´s selection process allows the use of a regression discontinuity design. We estimate both intent-to-treatment (offer admissions) and treatment-on-the-treated (enrollment) effects. The results show positive effects of offering admission to the prestigious university on the probability of enrollment, 13.8 percentage point (pp), 1.3 pp increase in academic credits a student need to repeat, and increment in 7 pp in probability of graduation. Despite no significant effects on the standardized university exit exam, we found positive effects on the probability of employment and earnings, 7.4 and 4.6 pp respectively. These results suggest that prestigious universities are more effective source of signaling in the labor market, but they are not more effective than other universities in developing human capital.
Barrera-Osorio, F., et al. (2018). "Concentrating efforts on low-performing schools: Impact estimates from a quasi-experimental design." Economics of Education Review 66: 73-91.
This paper presents the impact evaluation results of the Colombian program Todos a Aprender (Everyone Learning Program, ELP), a multi-level intervention targeting low-performing schools. The main objective of the program was to increase math and language test scores of these schools through on-site teacher training, principal training and textbooks for students. Using census data from public schools containing detailed longitudinal information since 2010, the starting year of the program, and taking advantage of targeting rules based on dropout and grade repetition rates we fit a fuzzy regression discontinuity design to estimate program impacts. We also fit a difference-in-difference matching model as well as blocking with regressions to estimate the ATT impact of the program, based on observed characteristics used in the targeting process. Overall results indicate no significant impact of the program on test scores, grade repetition nor dropout rates. Additional analyses from a representative sample of 400 schools collected in the field suggest that deficiencies in the program's design and implementation could explain the lack of significant program impacts.
Beatty, T. K. M., et al. (2014). "Cash by any other name? Evidence on labeling from the UK Winter Fuel Payment." Journal of Public Economics 118: 86-96.
Government transfers to individuals are often given labels indicating that they are designed to support the consumption of particular goods. Standard economic theory implies that the labeling of cash transfers or cash-equivalents should have no effect on spending patterns. We study the UK Winter Fuel Payment, a cash transfer to older households. Our empirical strategy nests a regression discontinuity design within an Engel curve framework. We find robust evidence of a behavioral effect of labeling. On average households spend 47% of the WFP on fuel. If the payment were treated as cash, we would expect households to spend 3% of the payment on fuel.
Berger, M., et al. (2016). "Higher taxes, more evasion? Evidence from border differentials in TV license fees." Journal of Public Economics 135: 74-86.
This paper studies the evasion of TV license fees in Austria. We exploit border differentials to identify the effect of fees on evasion. Comparing municipalities at the low- and high-fee side of state borders reveals that higher fees trigger significantly more evasion. Our preferred estimator indicates that a one percent increase in fees raises the evasion rate by 0.3 percentage points. The positive effect of fees on evasion is confirmed in different parametric and non-parametric approaches and survives several robustness checks.
Bergman, P. and M. J. Hill (2018). "The effects of making performance information public: Regression discontinuity evidence from Los Angeles teachers." Economics of Education Review 66: 104-113.
This paper uses school-district data and a regression discontinuity design to study the effects of making teachers’ value-added ratings available to the public and searchable by name. We find that cla***oom compositions change as a result of this new information. In particular, high-scoring students sort into the cla***ooms of published, high-value added teachers. This sorting occurs when there is within school-grade variation in teachers’ value added.
Bernal, N., et al. (2017). "The effects of access to health insurance: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design in Peru." Journal of Public Economics 154: 122-136.
In many countries large parts of the population do not have access to health insurance. Peru has made an effort to change this in the early 2000s. The institutional setup gives rise to the rare opportunity to study the effects of health insurance coverage exploiting a sharp regression discontinuity design. We find large effects on utilization that are most pronounced for the provision of curative care. Individuals seeing a doctor leads to increased awareness about health problems and generates a potentially desirable form of supplier-induced demand: they decide to pay themselves for services that are in short supply.
Boomhower, J. and L. W. Davis (2014). "A credible approach for measuring inframarginal participation in energy efficiency programs." Journal of Public Economics 113: 67-79.
Economists have long argued that many recipients of energy-efficiency subsidies may be “non-additional,” getting paid to do what they would have done anyway. Demonstrating this empirically has been difficult, however, because of endogeneity concerns and other challenges. In this paper we use a regression discontinuity analysis to examine participation in a large-scale residential energy-efficiency program. Comparing behavior just on either side of several eligibility thresholds, we find that program participation increases with larger subsidy amounts, but that most households would have participated even with much lower subsidy amounts. The large fraction of inframarginal participants means that the larger subsidy amounts are almost certainly not cost-effective. Moreover, the results imply that about half of all participants would have adopted the energy-efficient technology even with no subsidy whatsoever.
Bosch, M. and N. Schady (2019). "The effect of welfare payments on work: Regression discontinuity evidence from Ecuador." Journal of Development Economics 139: 17-27.
We study the impact of welfare payments in Ecuador on the probability that adults work, and on whether they are employed in the formal or informal sectors. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that welfare was limited to individuals below a cutoff value on a household “poverty score”. We find no evidence that transfers discouraged work. However, among women, welfare payments led to reductions in social security contributions (which are mandated for salaried workers), although the magnitude of these effects is small.
Bracco, E., et al. (2018). "The effect of far right parties on the location choice of immigrants: Evidence from Lega Nord Mayors." Journal of Public Economics 166: 12-26.
Immigration has increasingly taken centre-stage in the political landscape. Part of this has been a rise in far-right, anti-immigration parties in a range of countries. Existing evidence suggests that the presence of immigrants generates an advantage for parties with anti-immigration or nationalist platforms. This paper explores a closely related but overlooked issue: how immigrant behaviour is influenced by these parties. We focus on immigrant location decisions in Northern Italy, an area that has seen the rise of the anti-immigration party Lega Nord. We construct a dataset of mayoral elections in Italy for the years 2002–2014 and estimate the effect of electing a mayor belonging to, or supported by, Lega Nord. Exploiting close elections in a regression discontinuity framework we demonstrate that the election of a Lega Nord mayor discourages immigrants from moving into the municipality. We also provide suggestive evidence that the effect is driven primarily by the anti-immigration politics of Lega Nord insofar as it is absent in the period before their adoption of an explicitly anti-immigration platform and is concentrated in smaller, less educated, municipalities.
Brachert, M., et al. (2019). "The regional effects of a place-based policy – Causal evidence from Germany." Regional Science and Urban Economics 79: 103483.
The German government provides discretionary investment grants to structurally weak regions in order to reduce regional inequality. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits an exogenous discrete jump in the probability of regional actors to receive investment grants to identify the causal effects of the policy. We find positive effects of the programme on district-level gross value-added and productivity growth, but no effects on employment and gross wage growth.
Brasington, D. M. (2017). "School spending and new construction." Regional Science and Urban Economics 63: 76-84.
School districts that vote in favor of property tax levies may signal that they are education-oriented. Through Tiebout sorting and housing developer activity, new residents might move to such communities. New retail development may occur near these new residents, and office firms that rely on high-skilled residents might be drawn too. Using regression discontinuity we find school districts that renew property tax levies have a higher value of new construction than districts that do not renew these school expenditures. School tax levy renewal is responsible for 14% of new residential construction and 25% of new commercial construction.
Burgstahler, D. (2019). "Discussion of “Modeling the determinants of meet-or-just-beat behavior in distribution discontinuity tests”." Journal of Accounting and Economics 68(2): 101263.
Carlson, D. and S. Lavertu (2016). "Charter school closure and student achievement: Evidence from Ohio." Journal of Urban Economics 95: 31-48.
The closure of low-performing schools is an essential feature of the charter school model. Our regression discontinuity analysis uses an exogenous source of variation in school closure—an Ohio law that requires charter schools to close if they fail to meet a specific performance standard—to estimate the causal effect of closure on student achievement. The results indicate that closing low-performing charter schools eventually yields achievement gains of around 0.2–0.3 standard deviations in reading and math for students attending these schools at the time they were identified for closure. The study also employs mandatory closure as an instrument for estimating the impact of exiting low-quality charter schools, thus providing plausible lower-bound estimates of charter school effectiveness. These results complement the more common lottery-based estimates of charter school effects, which likely serve as upper-bound estimates due to their focus on oversubscribed schools often located in cities with high-performing charter sectors. We discuss the implications for research and policy.
Carrell, S. E., et al. (2011). "Does drinking impair college performance? Evidence from a regression discontinuity approach." Journal of Public Economics 95(1): 54-62.
This paper examines the effect of alcohol consumption on student achievement. To do so, we exploit the discontinuity in drinking at age 21 at a college in which the minimum legal drinking age is strictly enforced. We find that drinking causes significant reductions in academic performance, particularly for the highest-performing students. This suggests that the negative consequences of alcohol consumption extend beyond the narrow segment of the population at risk of more severe, low-frequency, outcomes.
Carrillo, P. E., et al. (2018). "Pollution or crime: The effect of driving restrictions on criminal activity." Journal of Public Economics 164: 50-69.
Driving restriction programs have been implemented in many cities around the world to alleviate pollution and congestion problems. Enforcement of such programs is costly and can potentially displace policing resources used for crime prevention and crime detection. Hence, driving restrictions may increase crime. To test this hypothesis, we exploit both temporal and spatial variation in the implementation of Quito, Ecuador's Pico y Placa program, and evaluate its effect on crime. Both difference-in-differences and spatial regression discontinuity estimates provide credible evidence that driving restrictions have increased crime rates.
Cerqua, A. and G. Pellegrini (2014). "Do subsidies to private capital boost firms' growth? A multiple regression discontinuity design approach." Journal of Public Economics 109: 114-126.
There is still little consensus among economists on the effectiveness of business support policies. The evaluation of such policies requires a reliable identification procedure that is hardly achieved in empirical studies. We analyse the impact of a policy instrument – Law 488/92 (L488), the main Italian regional policy – that allocates subsidies to private firms by a multiple ranking system. Thanks to the peculiar L488 selection process that creates the conditions for a local random experiment, we are able to assess the effectiveness of these types of incentives for a relevant subgroup of firms. We propose a nonparametric multiple rankings regression discontinuity design that exploits the sharp discontinuities in the L488 rankings and extends the regression discontinuity design (RDD) approach to a context where the treatment is assigned by multiple rankings with different cut-off points. We find that the impact of the subsidies on employment, investment, and turnover is positive and statistically significant, while the effect on productivity is mostly negligible. The new subsidised capital is additional but non-complementary with the owner-financed investment. The results are robust to different specifications and not due to intertemporal substitution.
Chen, S., et al. (2019). "How does quasi-indexer ownership affect corporate tax planning?" Journal of Accounting and Economics 67(2): 278-296.
We study whether, and more importantly, through what mechanisms, quasi-indexers affect portfolio firms’ tax planning by employing the discontinuity in quasi-indexer ownership around the Russell 1000/2000 index cutoff. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that higher quasi-indexer ownership leads to greater tax saving. With respect to the mechanisms, we find that the greater tax saving is a result of a focus on improved overall firm performance, not a specific focus on improved tax planning. We further find that the documented tax saving effect is partially due to quasi-indexers’ influences on executive equity incentives, corporate governance, and information environment.
Chen, Y., et al. (2019). "Valuing the urban hukou in China: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design for housing prices." Journal of Development Economics 141: 102381.
This paper explores the demand side of hukou (household registration) acquisition in China by estimating the market valuation of urban hukou. Based on Jinan City’s acquiring the hukous by purchasing houses policy, this paper uses houses with a floor area slightly larger and slightly smaller than the minimum required as the treatment and control groups, respectively, to implement a regression discontinuity design. The results show that residents’ willingness to pay for urban hukou in Jinan City was approximately 90,000–126,000 yuan in 2017. We also find great heterogeneity in different housing submarkets; the value of hukou is much higher in immigrant-dominated housing markets and top primary school districts. Our findings are robust to parametric and nonparametric estimates and different model specifications. We perform falsification tests by assuming a false policy introduction date and placebo tests based on rental data. Our analysis offers insights for hukou system reform and public services provision.
Chin, A., et al. (2013). "Impact of bilingual education programs on limited English proficient students and their peers: Regression discontinuity evidence from Texas." Journal of Public Economics 107: 63-78.
Texas requires a school district to offer bilingual education when its enrollment of limited English proficient (LEP) students in a particular elementary grade and language is twenty or higher. Using school panel data, we find a significant increase in the probability that a district provides bilingual education above this 20-student cutoff. Using this discontinuity as an instrument for district bilingual education provision, we find that providing bilingual education programs (relative to providing only English as a Second Language programs) does not significantly impact the standardized test scores of students with Spanish as their home language (comprised primarily of ever-LEP students). However, we find significant positive impacts on non-LEP students' achievement, which indicates that education programs for LEP students have spillover effects to non-LEP students.
Choi, J.-y. and M.-j. Lee (2018). "Relaxing conditions for local average treatment effect in fuzzy regression discontinuity." Economics Letters 173: 47-50.
In fuzzy regression discontinuity with a running/forcing variable S and a cutoff c, the identified treatment effect is the ‘effect on compliers at S=c’. This well-known ‘local average treatment effect (LATE)’ interpretation requires (i) a monotonicity condition and (ii) the independence of the potential treatment and potential response variables from S. These assumptions can be violated, however, particularly (ii) when S affects potential variables, which can easily happen in practice. In this paper, we weaken both assumptions so that LATE in fuzzy regression discontinuity has a better chance to hold in the real world, and practitioners can claim their findings in fuzzy regression discontinuity to be LATE.
Christelis, D., et al. (2020). "The impact of health insurance on stockholding: A regression discontinuity approach." Journal of Health Economics 69: 102246.
Economic theory predicts that a reduction in background risk should induce financial risk-taking, particularly for individuals with low stock market participation costs. Hence, health insurance coverage could affect financial risk-taking by offsetting health-related background risk. We use a regression discontinuity design to examine whether Medicare eligibility at age 65 increases stockholding in the US and find that it does so for those with college education, but not for their less-educated counterparts who face higher stock market participation costs. Our results are unlikely due to the reduction of medical expenses associated with Medicare coverage because the latter does not affect bondholding.
Cockx, B. and M. Dejemeppe (2012). "Monitoring job search effort: An evaluation based on a regression discontinuity design." Labour Economics 19(5): 729-737.
Since July 2004, the job search effort of long-term unemployed benefit claimants has been monitored in Belgium. We exploit the discontinuity in the treatment assignment at the age of 30 present in the first year of the reform to evaluate the effect of a notification sent at least eight months before job search is verified. Eight months after this notification and prior to the first monitoring interview, transitions to employment have increased by nearly nine percentage points compared to the counterfactual of no reform. Participation in training is raised, but not significantly, while withdrawals from the labor force are not affected.
Coviello, D. and M. Mariniello (2014). "Publicity requirements in public procurement: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design." Journal of Public Economics 109: 76-100.
We document whether and how publicizing a public procurement auction causally affects entry and the costs of procurement. We run a regression discontinuity design analysis on a large database of Italian procurement auctions. Auctions with a value above the threshold must be publicized in the Regional Official Gazette and two provincial newspapers. We find that the increased publicity requirement induces more entry and higher winning rebates, which reduces the costs of procurement and rationalizes public spending. The evidence suggests that the number of bidders is the channel through which publicity affects rebates. Increased publicity also selects different winners: it increases the likelihood that the winner hails from outside the region of the public administration and that the winner is a large company. Such companies tend to win repeated auctions gaining market share. Publicity seems to have no adverse effect on the ex-post renegotiations of the works, as measured by the percent of works delivered with delay or that are subcontracted. Estimates are robust to alternative measures of publicity, alternative model specifications, different sample selections, to a falsification analysis at simulated thresholds and to the possibility that firms learn about auctions from a web-based for-profit information provider.
Dague, L. (2014). "The effect of Medicaid premiums on enrollment: A regression discontinuity approach." Journal of Health Economics 37: 1-12.
This paper estimates the effect that premiums in Medicaid have on the length of enrollment of program beneficiaries. Whether and how low income-families will participate in the exchanges and in states’ Medicaid programs depends crucially on the structure and amounts of the premiums they will face. I take advantage of discontinuities in the structure of Wisconsin's Medicaid program to identify the effects of premiums on enrollment for low-income families. I use a 3-year administrative panel of enrollment data to estimate these effects. I find an increase in the premium from 0 to 10 dollars per month results in 1.4 fewer months enrolled and reduces the probability of remaining enrolled for a full year by 12 percentage points, but other discrete changes in premium amounts do not affect enrollment or have a much smaller effect. I find no evidence of program enrollees intentionally decreasing labor supply in order to avoid the premiums.
de Groot, N. and B. van der Klaauw (2019). "The effects of reducing the entitlement period to unemployment insurance benefits." Labour Economics 57: 195-208.
This paper uses a difference-in-differences approach exploiting a substantial reform of the Dutch unemployment insurance law and a regression discontinuity design based on policy discontinuities prior to the reform to study the effects of the benefits entitlement period on job finding and subsequent labor market outcomes. Using detailed administrative data covering the full population, both identification strategies show that reducing the entitlement period increases the job finding rate. We find mixed results for the quality of the job-worker match, which we attribute to differences in the time period and the group of affected unemployed workers. However, all our estimation results show that a shorter benefits entitlement period substantially increases cumulative earnings. These increases in earnings are larger than the cumulative reduction in benefits payments.
Dee, T. and X. Lan (2015). "The achievement and course-taking effects of magnet schools: Regression-discontinuity evidence from urban China." Economics of Education Review 47: 128-142.
We examine the effects of attending elite magnet schools on the subsequent academic performance of high-school students in urban China. Using a novel data set of the students who entered high school from 2006 to 2008 in a Chinese city, our fuzzy regression discontinuity estimates exploit the threshold values of the high school entrance exam scores. Passing the thresholds significantly reduces the financial cost and raises the probability of attending a magnet school. However, attending such an elite school does not meaningfully improve the academic performance of the marginal student.
DesJardins, S. L. and B. P. McCall (2014). "The impact of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program on college and post-college related choices of high ability, low-income minority students." Economics of Education Review 38: 124-138.
In this paper we analyze the impact of the Gates Millennium Scholarship Program on several outcome variables using a regression discontinuity design. We find that GMS recipients have lower college loan debt and parental contributions toward college expenses and work fewer hours during college than non-recipients. We also find that GMS recipients have higher grade point averages in their junior year of college and are more likely to aspire to a Ph.D. degree than non-recipients.
Dobkin, C., et al. (2010). "Skipping class in college and exam performance: Evidence from a regression discontinuity cla***oom experiment." Economics of Education Review 29(4): 566-575.
In this paper we estimate the effect of class attendance on exam performance by implementing a policy in three large economics classes that required students scoring below the median on the midterm exam to attend class. This policy generated a large discontinuity in the rate of post-midterm attendance at the median of the midterm score. We estimate that near the policy threshold, the post-midterm attendance rate was 36 percentage points higher for those students facing compulsory attendance. The discontinuous attendance policy is also associated with a significant difference in performance on the final exam. We estimate that a 10 percentage point increase in a student's overall attendance rate results in a 0.17 standard deviation increase in the final exam score without adversely affecting performance on other classes taken concurrently.
Dronyk-Trosper, T. (2017). "Getting what we vote for: A regression discontinuity test of ballot initiative outcomes." Regional Science and Urban Economics 64: 46-56.
What do voters really receive when they vote? This paper exploits 25 years of municipal level voting data in Massachusetts to identify the specific effects of voter approved ballots. In particular, this analysis attempts to determine the degree to which the median voter preferences are reflected in public expenditures. The findings suggest that voters see little change in expenditures, regardless of voting outcomes. To my knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind to directly link voting outcomes with non capital expenditure outcomes. This has important implications for discussing frictions that arise between voter preferences and local public expenditures.
Duchini, E. (2017). "Is college remedial education a worthy investment? New evidence from a sharp regression discontinuity design." Economics of Education Review 60: 36-53.
To enhance college completion, many institutions have introduced college remedial programs. Yet, till now there is little evidence that this policy helps raise students’ persistence and performance in college. To better understand how to design cost-effective remedial education, this paper studies the impact of an intervention implemented in an undergraduate economics program in Italy. This remedial policy aims at raising students’ effort and performance by combining a short remedial course with the threat of re-enrolling them in the first year in case of a failure in the remedial exam. To estimate causal effects, I implement a sharp regression discontinuity design that exploits the cutoff rule used to assign students to remediation. Results indicate that this nudge-type policy fails to obtain any positive and significant effect on either persistence or performance in college.
Dykstra, S., et al. (2019). "Regression discontinuity analysis of Gavi's impact on vaccination rates." Journal of Development Economics 140: 12-25.
Since 2001, an aid consortium known as Gavi has accounted for over half of vaccines purchased in the 75 eligible countries with an initial GNI below $1,000 per capita. Regression discontinuity estimates suggest most aid for cheap, existing vaccines like hepatitis B and DPT was inframarginal: for instance, hepatitis B doses sufficient to vaccinate roughly 75% of infants raised vaccination rates by single-digit margins. These results are driven by middle-income countries near the eligibility threshold, and do not preclude larger gains for the poorest countries, global externalities via vaccine markets, or impacts on newer vaccines such as pneumococcal or rotavirus for which income eligibility rules were relaxed.
Egger, P. H. and G. Wamser (2015). "The impact of controlled foreign company legislation on real investments abroad. A multi-dimensional regression discontinuity design." Journal of Public Economics 129: 77-91.
Controlled foreign company (CFC) rules are frequently imposed by countries as part of their anti-tax-avoidance legislation. This paper aims at quantifying the impact of the German CFC rule on the universe of foreign investments held by German multinational firms. The German CFC legislation gives rise to a multi-dimensional regression discontinuity design, which allows us to estimate local average treatment effects along the dimensions determining treatment. Our results suggest a significant and economically large impact of the CFC legislation on multinationals' real activity abroad. We also find evidence of some heterogeneity in estimated treatment effects according to parametric as well as nonparametric estimates.
Eren, O., et al. (2017). "Test-based promotion policies, dropping out, and juvenile crime." Journal of Public Economics 153: 9-31.
Over the past decade, several states and school districts have implemented accountability systems that require students to demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency through standardized tests. With many states and school districts ending social promotion, policy makers and researchers have gained renewed interest in the role of grade retention and remedial education in US schools. This paper examines the potential effects of summer school and grade retention on high school completion and juvenile crime. To do so, we use administrative data from a number of state agencies in Louisiana and a regression discontinuity design to analyze Louisiana's statewide test-based promotion policy administered to students in fourth and eighth grades. Our results indicate that potential grade retention increases the propensity of a student to drop out of school. In addition, eighth grade remedial education assignment in the form of summer school appears to provide a positive benefit by decreasing the likelihood that a student drops out. As for fourth grade students, however, we do not find any effect of summer school assignment. Finally, for eighth graders, we find that the net effect of the test-based promotion policies is to decrease the probability of being convicted of a juvenile crime.
Eriksen, M. D. (2017). "Difficult Development Areas and the supply of subsidized housing." Regional Science and Urban Economics 64: 68-80.
The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) provides a subsidy to developers who construct housing with maximum tenant incomes and contributions towards rent. The designation of a metropolitan area as a Difficult Development Area (DDA) by the U.S. Government increases the generosity of the subsidy that private developers receive under the program, but does not increase the aggregate dollar amount of tax credits available to be allocated. Regression discontinuity methods are used to compare how DDA designation affects the quantity, composition, and location of LIHTC units based on the restriction that no more than 20% of metropolitan areas can receive the designation annually. Results indicate a significant reduction in LIHTC subsidized construction occurs at the 20% population limit, although increases the share of subsidized units located in higher-income neighborhoods.
Figlio, D., et al. (2018). "Do students benefit from longer school days? Regression discontinuity evidence from Florida's additional hour of literacy instruction." Economics of Education Review 67: 171-183.
Instructional time is a fundamental educational input, yet we have little causal evidence about the effect of longer school days on student achievement. This paper uses a sharp regression discontinuity design to estimate the effects of lengthening the school day for low-performing schools in Florida by exploiting an administrative cutoff for eligibility. Our results indicate significant positive effects of additional literacy instruction on student reading achievement. In particular, we find effects of 0.05 standard deviations of improvement in reading test scores for program assignment in the first year, though long-run effects are difficult to assess.
Francis-Tan, A. and M. Tannuri-Pianto (2018). "Black Movement: Using discontinuities in admissions to study the effects of college quality and affirmative action." Journal of Development Economics 135: 97-116.
The recent adoption of race-targeted policies makes Brazil an insightful place to study affirmative action. In this paper, we estimate the effects of racial quotas at the University of Brasilia, which reserved 20% of admissions slots for persons who self-identified as black. To do so, we link the admissions outcomes of high-performing applicants in 2004–2005 to their education and labor market outcomes in 2012. We adopt methods that make use of sharp discontinuities in the admissions process. In summary, the policy of racial quotas mostly improved outcomes for the targeted group. Quota applicants, specifically males, enjoyed an increase in years of education, college completion, and labor earnings. More broadly, the results for quota and non-quota applicants confirm the importance of college quality in a setting outside of the U.S.
Fu, S. and Y. Gu (2017). "Highway toll and air pollution: Evidence from Chinese cities." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 83: 32-49.
Most highways in urban China are tolled to finance their construction. During the eight-day National Day holiday in 2012, highway tolls were waived nationwide for passenger vehicles. We use this to identify the effects of highway tolls on air pollution. Using daily pollution and weather data for 98 Chinese cities in 2011 and 2012 and employing both a regression discontinuity design and differences-in-differences method with the 2011 National Day holiday as a control, we find that eliminating tolls increases pollution by 20% and decreases visibility by one kilometer. We also estimate that the toll elasticity of air pollution is −0.15. These findings complement the scant literature on the environmental impact of road pricing.
Georgiou, G. (2014). "Does increased post-release supervision of criminal offenders reduce recidivism? Evidence from a statewide quasi-experiment." International Review of Law and Economics 37: 221-243.
Approximately 4.8 million offenders are subject to community supervision in the United States. This paper examines whether a program that assigned different supervision levels based on a risk assessment instrument, had any effect on offenders’ recidivism rates. Using a large statewide sample of adult offenders in Washington State and a regression discontinuity design, I compare offenders whose risk characteristics are similar but who received different levels of post-release supervision. I find that offenders who received more supervision were not less likely to reoffend. The result holds for high-risk and low-risk offenders and for various types of recidivism.
Gibbons, S., et al. (2013). "Valuing school quality using boundary discontinuities." Journal of Urban Economics 75: 15-28.
Existing research shows that house prices respond to local school quality as measured by average test scores. However, higher test scores could signal higher academic value-added or higher ability, more sought-after intakes. In our research, we show that both school value-added and student prior achievement – linked to the background of children in schools – affect households’ demand for education. In order to identify these effects, we improve the boundary discontinuity regression methodology by matching identical properties across admissions authority boundaries; by allowing for boundary effects and spatial trends; by re-weighting our data towards transactions that are closest to district boundaries; by eliminating boundaries that coincide with major geographical features; and by submitting our estimates to a number of novel falsification tests. Our results survive this battery of tests and show that a one-standard deviation change in either school average value-added or prior achievement raises prices by around 3%.
Giuntella, O. and F. Mazzonna (2019). "Sunset time and the economic effects of social jetlag: evidence from US time zone borders." Journal of Health Economics 65: 210-226.
The rapid evolution into a 24 h society challenges individuals’ ability to conciliate work schedules and biological needs. Epidemiological research suggests that social and biological time are increasingly drifting apart (“social jetlag”). This study uses a spatial regression discontinuity design to estimate the economic cost of the misalignment between social and biological rhythms arising at the border of a time-zone in the presence of relatively rigid social schedules (e.g., work and school schedules). Exploiting the discontinuity in the timing of natural light at a time-zone boundary, we find that an extra hour of natural light in the evening reduces sleep duration by an average of 19 minutes and increases the likelihood of reporting insufficient sleep. Using data drawn from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Census, we find that the discontinuity in the timing of natural light has significant effects on health outcomes typically associated with circadian rhythms disruptions (e.g., obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and breast cancer) and economic performance (per capita income). We provide a lower bound estimate of the health care costs and productivity losses associated with these effects.
Grout, C. A., et al. (2011). "Land-use regulations and property values in Portland, Oregon: A regression discontinuity design approach." Regional Science and Urban Economics 41(2): 98-107.
Over the past two decades, the tension between public and private interests in the use of land has given rise to state-level legislation seeking to limit government controls on private property. In 2004, voters in Oregon approved Measure 37, which required payments to private landowners for reductions in the value of their property resulting from land-use regulations. The central economic question behind Measure 37 and compensation statutes adopted in other states is, what is the effect of land-use regulations on property values? Economists investigating this question have typically estimated hedonic property value models with regulations included as exogenous regressors. This approach is likely to be invalid if the parcel characteristics that determine property values also influence the government's decision about how to implement regulations. We use Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) to study the effect of the Portland, Oregon, Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) on property values. RDD provides an unbiased estimate of the treatment effect under relatively mild conditions and is well-suited to our application because the UGB defines a sharp treatment threshold. We find a price differential on the western and southern sides of the Portland metropolitan area ranging from $30,000 to at least $140,000, but no price differential on the eastern side. Support for Measure 37 was fueled by price differences such as these among parcels subject to different regulations, but one must be careful not to view current price differentials as evidence that regulations have reduced property values.
He, X. (2019). "China's electrification and rural labor: Analysis with fuzzy regression discontinuity." Energy Economics 81: 650-660.
This article exploits the exogenous shock of China's Rural Primary Electrification program at the county-level to understand how electrification may impact rural arears in terms of labor supply. The fuzzy regression discontinuity method is employed to address the endogeneity problem of the electrification assignment and to identify treatment effects. The results show that the assignment of the electrification treatment can be efficiently identified by whether the amount of pretreatment electricity consumption level fell below a cutoff value. Moreover, over the program's disbursement period from 1991 to 2000, electrification has had measurable and positive impact on labor supply and electricity consumption of the rural households. There is also evidence that electrification has negative effect on the long-term employment growth in the rural areas of the recipient counties. The article concludes the positive effect of electrification on labor supply is hard to translate into a positive effect on rural employment, in the absence of rural enterprises development.
Heinesen, E. (2018). "Admission to higher education programmes and student educational outcomes and earnings–Evidence from Denmark." Economics of Education Review 63: 1-19.
This paper uses data from the central admission system for Danish post-secondary education merged with other administrative data. Applicants for admission may rank up to eight educational programmes, and I focus on first-time applicants whose first-choice are bachelor's degree university programmes with restricted admission, i.e. with an admission threshold defined in terms of the grade point average obtained from upper secondary school. Using threshold crossing as an instrument for admission in a regression discontinuity design, I find that being admitted to the first-choice programme increases the probability of completing a master's degree in that subject by about 20 percentage points. There is no clear evidence that being admitted to one of the higher degree programmes listed on the application has an effect on years of education or the probability of completing a master's degree (although point estimates indicate small positive effects). There is no robust statistically significant effect on earnings 11 years after application.
Heissel, J. A. and H. F. Ladd (2018). "School turnaround in North Carolina: A regression discontinuity analysis." Economics of Education Review 62: 302-320.
This paper examines the effect of a federally supported school turnaround program in North Carolina elementary and middle schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the turnaround program did not improve, and may have reduced, average school-level passing rates in math and reading. One potential contributor to that finding appears to be that the program increased the concentration of low-income students in treated schools. Based on teacher survey data, we find that, as was intended, treated schools brought in new principals and increased the time teachers devoted to professional development. At the same time, the program increased administrative burdens and distracted teachers, potentially reducing time available for instruction, and increased teacher turnover after the first full year of implementation. Overall, we find little evidence of success for North Carolina's efforts to turn around low-performing schools under its Race to the Top grant.
Hemelt, S. W. (2011). "Performance effects of failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP): Evidence from a regression discontinuity framework." Economics of Education Review 30(4): 702-723.
As the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law moves through the reauthorization process, it is important to understand the basic performance impacts of its central structure of accountability. In this paper, I examine the effects of failure to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) under NCLB on subsequent student math and reading performance at the school level. Using panel data on Maryland elementary and middle schools from 2003 to 2009, I find that the scope of failure matters: Academic performance suffers in the short run in response to school-wide failure. However, schools that meet achievement targets for the aggregate student group, yet fail to meet at least one demographic subgroup's target see between 3 and 6 percent more students in the failing subgroup score proficiently the following year, compared to if no accountability pressure were in place. I discuss alternative interpretations and policy implications of the main findings.
Hidano, N., et al. (2015). "The effect of seismic hazard risk information on property prices: Evidence from a spatial regression discontinuity design." Regional Science and Urban Economics 53: 113-122.
In this paper, we utilize a spatial two-dimensional regression discontinuity (RD) design to study how Tokyo's property market evaluates information on seismic hazard risk. This approach is superior to the conventional one-dimensional RD design as it is able to account for spatially heterogeneous treatment effects and reduce small-sample biases. Our data consists of residential property transactions from the 23-ward area of Tokyo. Our results show that the unit prices of residential properties in low-risk zones were between 13,970–17,380 JPY higher than those in high-risk zones depending on the type of seismic hazard risk. In addition, we find that information on seismic hazard risk does not significantly affect the prices of newly constructed apartments, which are more resistant to earthquake damage than older residences.
Hijzen, A., et al. (2017). "The impact of employment protection on temporary employment: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design." Labour Economics 46: 64-76.
This paper analyses the impact of employment protection (EP) on the composition of the workforce and worker turnover using a unique firm-level dataset for Italy. The impact of employment protection is analyzed by means of a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that exploits the variation in EP provisions in Italy across firms below and above a size threshold. We present three main findings. First, EP increases worker turnover, defined as the sum of hires and separations, thereby reducing rather than increasing worker security on average. Second, this can be entirely explained by the fact that firms facing more stringent EP make a greater use of workers on temporary contracts. Our preferred estimates suggest that the discontinuity in EP increases the incidence of temporary work by 2–2.5 percentage points around the threshold. Moreover, the effect of employment protection persists well beyond the threshold and may account for about 12% of the overall incidence of temporary work. Third, EP tends to reduce labour productivity. This is partly due to the impact of EP on worker turnover and the incidence of temporary work.
Hodara, M. and D. Xu (2018). "Are two subjects better than one? The effects of developmental English courses on language minority and native English-speaking students’ community college outcomes." Economics of Education Review 66: 1-13.
Developmental reading and writing courses seek to provide underprepared college students with the academic literacy skills necessary to succeed in college-level coursework. Yet, little is known about the effects of these courses on students with different language backgrounds. This study uses administrative data from a large college system and a regression discontinuity design to identify the impact of two developmental English subjects, reading and writing, compared to one developmental English subject, writing, on the educational outcomes of native English-speaking and language minority community college students. Results suggest heterogeneous effects. Taking developmental reading and writing versus just writing coursework has no impact on the educational outcomes of native English-speaking students. However, there is a potential benefit of pairing developmental reading and writing together on language minority students’ persistence and college-level reading and writing skills, as measured by a standardized exam.
Holbein, J. B. and H. F. Ladd (2017). "Accountability pressure: Regression discontinuity estimates of how No Child Left Behind influenced student behavior." Economics of Education Review 58: 55-67.
In this paper we examine how failing to make adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the accountability pressure that ensues, affects various non-achievement student behaviors. Using administrative data from North Carolina and leveraging a discontinuity in the determination of school failure, we examine the causal impact of this form of accountability pressure both on student behaviors that are incentivized by NCLB and on those that are not. We find evidence that, as NCLB intends, pressure encourages students to show up at school and to do so on time. Accountability pressure also appears to have the unintended effect, however, of increasing the number of student misbehaviors. Further, we find some evidence that this negative response is most pronounced among minorities and low performing students: those who are the most likely to be left behind.
Hong, K. and R. Zimmer (2016). "Does Investing in School Capital Infrastructure Improve Student Achievement?" Economics of Education Review 53: 143-158.
Within the research community, there is a vigorous debate over whether additional educational expenditures will lead to improved performance of schools. Some of the debate is an outgrowth of the lack of causal knowledge of the impacts of expenditures on student outcomes. To help fill this void, we examine the causal impact of capital expenditures on school district proficiency rates in Michigan. For the analysis, we employ a regression discontinuity design where we use the outcomes of bond elections as the forcing variable. Our results provide some evidence that capital expenditures can have positive effects on student proficiency levels.
Huang, C., et al. (2020). "The early bird catches the worm? School entry cutoff and the timing of births." Journal of Development Economics 143: 102386.
Does the cutoff date for school entry affect the timing of births? Using administrative data from birth certificates that covers over five million newborns in Guangdong Province of China from 2014 to 2016, we find that more than 2000 births in a single year are shifted from seven days after the cutoff date to seven days before the cutoff date. Because of the strict administrative procedures in China to record births, manipulation of reported birthdates is infeasible. We also find evidence that mother and child characteristics systematically differ across the threshold; in particular, advantaged mothers are more likely to bring delivery forward to send their children to school at a relatively young age. These heterogeneous responses around the cutoff date violate the assumption in regression discontinuity design that the date of birth is exogenous. Moreover, our results contribute crucially to understanding the different starting age effects between China and developed countries.
Hymel, K. (2014). "Do parking fees affect retail sales? Evidence from Starbucks." Economics of Transportation 3(3): 221-233.
Parking meters are a common feature of urban areas, yet their economic impacts are not well understood. Local governments use meters to raise revenue and to ration scarce parking spaces. On-street parking, however, is seldom priced at the market rate. When inefficiently priced, parking meters may negatively affect the businesses and individuals they are intended to serve. This paper uses a quasi-experimental research design and an observational data set to assess metered parking policy. Sharp twice-daily changes in parking meter enforcement provide a comparison of customer traffic to a popular retail area in free and metered parking environments. Regression discontinuity results suggest that when there is an excess supply of parking (i.e., many spaces are vacant), a small 50 cent per-hour parking fee deters commerce. At two separate Starbucks establishments, the meter fee reduced customer traffic by almost 30%. However, when there is excess demand for parking (i.e., all spaces are constantly occupied), there is no evidence that meters help to increase customer traffic. These results suggest that sub-optimal meter pricing can impose substantial costs on nearby businesses.
Khanna, G. and L. Zimmermann (2017). "Guns and butter? Fighting violence with the promise of development." Journal of Development Economics 124: 120-141.
There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze the impact of one of the world's largest anti-poverty programs, India's NREGS, on the intensity of Maoist conflict. We find short-run increases of insurgency-related violence, police-initiated attacks, and insurgent attacks on civilians. We discuss how these results relate to established theories in the literature. One mechanism consistent with the empirical patterns is that NREGS induces civilians to share more information with the state, improving police effectiveness.
Kollmann, T., et al. (2018). "Racial segregation in the United States since the Great Depression: A dynamic segregation approach." Journal of Housing Economics 40: 95-116.
Racial segregation is a salient feature of cities in the United States. Models like Schelling (1971) show that segregation can arise through white preferences for residing near m