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Flexible Covariate Adjustments in Regression Discontinuity Designs

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  • Claudia Noack
  • Tomasz Olma
  • Christoph Rothe

Abstract

Empirical regression discontinuity (RD) studies often use covariates to increase the precision of their estimates. In this paper, we propose a novel class of estimators that use such covariate information more efficiently than existing methods and can accommodate many covariates. It involves running a standard RD analysis in which a function of the covariates has been subtracted from the original outcome variable. We characterize the function that leads to the estimator with the smallest asymptotic variance, and consider feasible versions of such estimators in which this function is estimated, for example, through modern machine learning techniques.

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  • Claudia Noack & Tomasz Olma & Christoph Rothe, 2021. "Flexible Covariate Adjustments in Regression Discontinuity Designs," Papers 2107.07942, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2107.07942
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Alexander Krei{ss} & Christoph Rothe, 2021. "Inference in Regression Discontinuity Designs with High-Dimensional Covariates," Papers 2110.13725, arXiv.org, revised May 2022.

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