IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ubc/pmicro/vadim_marmer-2010-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Weak Identification in Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Designs

Author

Listed:
  • Feir, Donna
  • Lemieux, Thomas
  • Marmer, Vadim

Abstract

In fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) designs, the treatment effect is identified through a discontinuity in the conditional probability of treatment assignment. We show that when identification is weak (i.e. when the discontinuity is of a small magnitude) the usual t-test based on the FRD estimator and its standard error suffers from asymptotic size distortions as in a standard instrumental variables setting. This problem can be especially severe in the FRD setting since only observations close to the discontinuity are useful for estimating the treatment effect. To eliminate those size distortions, we propose a modified t-statistic that uses a null-restricted version of the standard error of the FRD estimator. Simple and asymptotically valid confidence sets for the treatment effect can be also constructed using this null-restricted standard error. An extension to testing for constancy of the regression discontinuity effect across covariates is also discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Feir, Donna & Lemieux, Thomas & Marmer, Vadim, 2010. "Weak Identification in Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Designs," Microeconomics.ca working papers vadim_marmer-2010-19, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 17 Apr 2016.
  • Handle: RePEc:ubc:pmicro:vadim_marmer-2010-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://microeconomics.ca/vadim_marmer/wfrd09.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Otsu, Taisuke & Xu, Ke-Li & Matsushita, Yukitoshi, 2015. "Empirical likelihood for regression discontinuity design," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(1), pages 94-112.
    2. Antoine, Bertille & Renault, Eric, 2012. "Efficient minimum distance estimation with multiple rates of convergence," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 170(2), pages 350-367.
    3. Miguel Urquiola & Eric Verhoogen, 2009. "Class-Size Caps, Sorting, and the Regression-Discontinuity Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 179-215, March.
    4. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    5. Antoine, Bertille & Lavergne, Pascal, 2014. "Conditional moment models under semi-strong identification," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 182(1), pages 59-69.
    6. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    7. Davidson, James, 1994. "Stochastic Limit Theory: An Introduction for Econometricians," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198774037.
    8. Sebastian Calonico & Matias D. Cattaneo & Rocio Titiunik, 2014. "Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression‐Discontinuity Designs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82, pages 2295-2326, November.
    9. Guido W. Imbens & Charles F. Manski, 2004. "Confidence Intervals for Partially Identified Parameters," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(6), pages 1845-1857, November.
    10. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    11. Papay, John P. & Willett, John B. & Murnane, Richard J., 2011. "Extending the regression-discontinuity approach to multiple assignment variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 161(2), pages 203-207, April.
    12. Wilbert Van Der Klaauw, 2008. "Regression–Discontinuity Analysis: A Survey of Recent Developments in Economics," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 22(2), pages 219-245, June.
    13. Jean-Marie Dufour, 1997. "Some Impossibility Theorems in Econometrics with Applications to Structural and Dynamic Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(6), pages 1365-1388, November.
    14. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2007. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521871532, October.
    15. Bertille Antoine & Eric Renault, 2009. "Efficient GMM with nearly-weak instruments," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 12(s1), pages 135-171, January.
    16. Marcelo J. Moreira, 2003. "A Conditional Likelihood Ratio Test for Structural Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(4), pages 1027-1048, July.
    17. Hahn, Jinyong & Todd, Petra & Van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2001. "Identification and Estimation of Treatment Effects with a Regression-Discontinuity Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(1), pages 201-209, January.
    18. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
    19. Frank Kleibergen, 2002. "Pivotal Statistics for Testing Structural Parameters in Instrumental Variables Regression," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1781-1803, September.
    20. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2007. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521871549, October.
    21. Donald W. K. Andrews & Marcelo J. Moreira & James H. Stock, 2006. "Optimal Two-Sided Invariant Similar Tests for Instrumental Variables Regression," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(3), pages 715-752, May.
    22. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2007. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521692106, October.
    23. Hahn, Jinyong & Kuersteiner, Guido, 2002. "Discontinuities of weak instrument limiting distributions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 325-331, May.
    24. Joshua D. Angrist & Victor Lavy, 1999. "Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 114(2), pages 533-575.
    25. Anna Mikusheva, 2007. "Uniform Inference in Autoregressive Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(5), pages 1411-1452, September.
    26. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2007. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521692090, October.
    27. Mills, Benjamin & Moreira, Marcelo J. & Vilela, Lucas P., 2014. "Tests based on t-statistics for IV regression with weak instruments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 182(2), pages 351-363.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    2. Jin-young Choi & Myoung-jae Lee, 2017. "Regression discontinuity: review with extensions," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1217-1246, December.
    3. Mardi Dungey & Vitali Alexeev & Jing Tian & Alastair R. Hall, 2015. "Econometricians Have Their Moments: GMM at 32," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 91, pages 1-24, June.
    4. Guggenberger, Patrik & Ramalho, Joaquim J.S. & Smith, Richard J., 2012. "GEL statistics under weak identification," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 170(2), pages 331-349.
    5. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin & Dufour, Jean-Marie, 2020. "Exogeneity tests, incomplete models, weak identification and non-Gaussian distributions: Invariance and finite-sample distributional theory," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 218(2), pages 390-418.
    6. Imbens, Guido W., 2014. "Instrumental Variables: An Econometrician's Perspective," IZA Discussion Papers 8048, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Cattaneo, Matias D. & Crump, Richard K. & Jansson, Michael, 2012. "Optimal inference for instrumental variables regression with non-Gaussian errors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 167(1), pages 1-15.
    8. Bertanha, Marinho & Moreira, Marcelo J., 2020. "Impossible inference in econometrics: Theory and applications," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 218(2), pages 247-270.
    9. Horowitz, Joel L., 2021. "Bounding the difference between true and nominal rejection probabilities in tests of hypotheses about instrumental variables models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 222(2), pages 1057-1082.
    10. Firmin Doko Tchatoka & Wenjie Wang, 2015. "On Bootstrap Validity for Subset Anderson-Rubin Test in IV Regressions," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2015-01, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    11. Guido Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2019. "Optimized Regression Discontinuity Designs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 264-278, May.
    12. Cheng, Xu, 2015. "Robust inference in nonlinear models with mixed identification strength," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 207-228.
    13. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin Sabro, 2012. "Specification Tests with Weak and Invalid Instruments," MPRA Paper 40185, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Marcellino, Massimiliano & Kapetanios, George & Khalaf, Lynda, 2015. "Factor based identification-robust inference in IV regressions," CEPR Discussion Papers 10390, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Manuel Denzer & Constantin Weiser, 2021. "Beyond F-statistic - A General Approach for Assessing Weak Identification," Working Papers 2107, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    16. Xu Cheng, 2014. "Uniform Inference in Nonlinear Models with Mixed Identification Strength," PIER Working Paper Archive 14-018, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    17. Chiang, Harold D. & Hsu, Yu-Chin & Sasaki, Yuya, 2019. "Robust uniform inference for quantile treatment effects in regression discontinuity designs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 211(2), pages 589-618.
    18. Antoine, Bertille & Lavergne, Pascal, 2023. "Identification-robust nonparametric inference in a linear IV model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(1), pages 1-24.
    19. Ivan A Canay & Vishal Kamat, 2018. "Approximate Permutation Tests and Induced Order Statistics in the Regression Discontinuity Design," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 85(3), pages 1577-1608.
    20. Jean-Thomas Bernard & Ba Chu & Lynda Khalaf & Marcel Voia, 2019. "Non-Standard Confidence Sets for Ratios and Tipping Points with Applications to Dynamic Panel Data," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 134, pages 79-108.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Nonparametric inference; treatment effect; size distortions; Anderson-Rubin test; robust confidence set; class size effect;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ubc:pmicro:vadim_marmer-2010-19. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Maureen Chin (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.economics.ubc.ca/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.