Manipulation Testing Using Local Polynomial Density Methods

The rddensity package implements manipulation testing procedures for regression discontinuity designs and other settings where researchers want to test for sorting around a cutoff.

• rddensity: density discontinuity testing with local polynomial density estimators.
• rdbwdensity: data-driven bandwidth selection for manipulation testing.
• rdplotdensity: density plots with histogram and confidence-band options.

Python Implementation

To install/update in Python type:

pip install rddensity

• Help: PyPI repository.

• Replication: rddensity illustration, rdplotdensity illustration, senate data.

R Implementation

To install/update in R type:

install.packages('rddensity')

• Help: R Manual, CRAN repository.

• Replication: rddensity illustration, rdplotdensity illustration, senate data.

Stata Implementation

To install/update in Stata type:

net install rddensity, from(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rdpackages/rddensity/main/stata) replace

• Help: rddensity, rdbwdensity.

• Replication: rddensity illustration, rdplotdensity illustration, senate data.

References

For overviews and introductions, see the rdpackages website.

Software and Implementation

• Cattaneo, Jansson and Ma (2018): Manipulation Testing based on Density Discontinuity.
  Stata Journal 18(1): 234-261.

• Cattaneo, Jansson and Ma (2022): lpdensity: Local Polynomial Density Estimation and Inference.
  Journal of Statistical Software 101(2): 1-25.

Technical and Methodological

• Cattaneo, Jansson and Ma (2020): Simple Local Polynomial Density Estimators.
  Journal of the American Statistical Association 115(531): 1449-1455.
  Supplemental appendix.

• Cattaneo, Jansson and Ma (2024): Local Regression Distribution Estimators.
  Journal of Econometrics 240(2): 105074.
  Supplemental appendix.

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through grants SES-1357561, SES-1459931, SES-1459967, SES-1947662, SES-1947805, and SES-2019432.