Inference in Regression Discontinuity Designs with Clustered Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Noack, Claudia, Olma, Tomasz, Rothe, Christoph
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Noack, Claudia
Olma, Tomasz
Rothe, Christoph
author_facet Noack, Claudia
Olma, Tomasz
Rothe, Christoph
contents Clustered sampling is prevalent in empirical regression discontinuity (RD) designs, but it has not received much attention in the theoretical literature. In this paper, we introduce a general model-based framework for such settings and derive high-level conditions under which the standard local linear RD estimator is asymptotically normal. We verify that our high-level assumptions hold across a wide range of empirical designs, including settings of growing cluster sizes. We further show that clustered standard errors that are currently used in practice can be either inconsistent or overly conservative in finite samples. To address these issues, we propose a novel nearest-neighbor-type variance estimator and illustrate its properties in a diverse set of empirical applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_18870
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Inference in Regression Discontinuity Designs with Clustered Data
Noack, Claudia
Olma, Tomasz
Rothe, Christoph
Econometrics
Methodology
Clustered sampling is prevalent in empirical regression discontinuity (RD) designs, but it has not received much attention in the theoretical literature. In this paper, we introduce a general model-based framework for such settings and derive high-level conditions under which the standard local linear RD estimator is asymptotically normal. We verify that our high-level assumptions hold across a wide range of empirical designs, including settings of growing cluster sizes. We further show that clustered standard errors that are currently used in practice can be either inconsistent or overly conservative in finite samples. To address these issues, we propose a novel nearest-neighbor-type variance estimator and illustrate its properties in a diverse set of empirical applications.
title Inference in Regression Discontinuity Designs with Clustered Data
topic Econometrics
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.18870