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A Toolkit for the Study of Treatment-Effect Discontinuities

Author

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  • Alessandro Baldi Antognini
  • Paolo Verme

Abstract

This paper provides a toolkit for the study of distributional treatment effects (DTEs) focused on treatment-effect discontinuities defined as points where marginal distributional effects change sign. Building on the Treatment Effects Curve (TEC, Verme, 2010), the paper makes three contributions. First, we propose a methodological framework comprising a Horizontal Discontinuity Analysis (HDA) comparing groups in regions of opposite-signed effects using causal forests, and a Vertical Discontinuity Analysis (VDA) examining sign-switch points. Second, we adapt crossing-point asymptotics to locate where a TEC crosses zero and to test the non-tangentiality of its local slope with a bias-corrected Wald statistic. Third, we illustrate the full workflow on synthetic data and add a diagnostic application to Mexico's PROGRESA data. The paper shows how these contributions complement and expand existing instruments for DTE analyses.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Baldi Antognini & Paolo Verme, 2026. "A Toolkit for the Study of Treatment-Effect Discontinuities," Papers 2606.28017, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2606.28017
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    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.28017
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