Isotonic regression discontinuity designs

Authors

Andrii Babii, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Rohit Kumar, Indian Statistical Institute (Delhi Centre)

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Journal of Econometrics

Abstract

This paper studies the estimation and inference for the isotonic regression at the boundary point, an object that is particularly interesting and required in the analysis of monotone regression discontinuity designs. We show that the isotonic regression is inconsistent in this setting and derive the asymptotic distributions of boundary corrected estimators. Interestingly, the boundary corrected estimators can be bootstrapped without subsampling or additional nonparametric smoothing which is not the case for the interior point. The Monte Carlo experiments indicate that shape restrictions can improve dramatically the finite-sample performance of unrestricted estimators. Lastly, we estimate the causal effect of incumbency in U.S. House elections via the isotonic regression discontinuity design.

DOI

10.1016/j.jeconom.2021.01.008

Publication Date

1-1-2021

Comments

Open Access, Green

Recommended Citation

Babii, Andrii and Kumar, Rohit, "Isotonic regression discontinuity designs" (2021). Journal Articles. 2212.
https://digitalcommons.isical.ac.in/journal-articles/2212