Regression Discontinuity Design Application.

rddapp

Overview

rddapp provides a set of functions for the analysis of the regression-discontinuity design (RDD).

The three main parts are:

• Estimation of effects of interest
• Power analysis
• Assumption checks

Estimation

The package estimates treatment effects from RDDs for the following designs and approaches:

• Parametric RDD with single assignment variables (both sharp and fuzzy designs)
• Non-parametric RDD with single assignment variables (both sharp and fuzzy designs)
• Parametric RDDs with two assignment variables (both sharp and fuzzy designs), using univariate, centering, and frontier approaches

Power analysis

Given input from the user about desired Type I error rate and assumptions about the population, the package allows estimation of power for the following designs:

• Single assignment RDDs (both sharp and fuzzy) using both parametric and non-parametric estimation
• Multiple-assignment RDDs (both sharp and fuzzy) using various parametric models

Assumption checks

The package allows the user to perform a variety of assumption and sensitivity checks, including:

• McCrary's sorting test on the assignment variable
• Sensitivity to the chosen bandwidth in non-parametric estimation
• Placebo tests to examine treatment effects at values away from the cut-off
• Discontinuities in the treatment probability at cut-off
• Discontinuities for baseline covariates

Installation

# Install the released version from CRAN
install.packages("rddapp")

# Or the development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("felixthoemmes/rddapp")