Donut Regression Discontinuity Designs

Abstract: We study the econometric properties of so-called donut regression discontinuity (RD) designs, a robustness exercise which involves repeating estimation and inference without the data points in some area around the treatment threshold. This approach is often motivated by concerns that possible systematic sorting of units, or similar data issues, in some neighborhood of the treatment threshold might distort estimation and inference of RD treatment effects. We show that donut RD estimators can have substantially larger bias and variance than contentional RD estimators, and that the corresponding confidence intervals can be substantially longer. We also provide a formal testing framework for comparing donut and conventional RD estimation results.