Manipulation Testing Based on Density Discontinuity
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, we introduce two community-contributed commands, rddensity and rdbwdensity, that implement automatic manipulation tests based on density discontinuity and are constructed using the results for local-polynomial density estimators in Cattaneo, Jansson, and Ma (2017b, Simple local polynomial density estimators, Working paper, University of Michigan). These new tests exhibit better size properties (and more power under additional assumptions) than other conventional approaches currently available in the literature. The first command, rddensity, implements manipulation tests based on a novel local-polynomial density estimation technique that avoids prebinning of the data (improving size properties) and allows for restrictions on other features of the model (improving power properties). The second command, rdbwdensity, implements several bandwidth selectors specifically tailored for the manipulation tests discussed herein. We also provide a companion R package with the same syntax and capabilities as rddensity and rdbwdensity.
Authors: Matias D. Cattaneo, Michael Jansson, Xinwei Ma
Institutions: University of Michigan, University of California, Berkeley
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics and Probability
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Collaborative Research: Flexible and Robust Data-driven Inference in Nonparametric and Semiparametric Econometrics, Center for Research in Econometric Analysis of Time Series (CREATES), Collaborative Research: Flexible and Robust Data-driven Inference in Nonparametric and Semiparametric Econometrics, New Methodological Developments for Inference in the Regression-Discontinuity Design
OpenAlex ID: W2866690087