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Breaking Ties: Regression Discontinuity Design Meets Market Design

Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Joshua D. Angrist, Yusuke Narita, Parag Pathak

arXiv 31 Dec 2020 · Econometrics · publishedEconometrica (2022) · 48 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2101.01093 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Many schools in large urban districts have more applicants than seats. Centralized school assignment algorithms ration seats at over-subscribed schools using randomly assigned lottery numbers, non-lottery tie-breakers like test scores, or both. The New York City public high school match illustrates the latter, using test scores and other criteria to rank applicants at “screened” schools, combined with lottery tie-breaking at unscreened “lottery” schools. We show how to identify causal effects of school attendance in such settings. Our approach generalizes regression discontinuity methods to allow for multiple treatments and multiple running variables, some of which are randomly assigned. The key to this generalization is a local propensity score that quantifies the school assignment probabilities induced by lottery and non-lottery tie-breakers. The local propensity score is applied in an empirical assessment of the predictive value of New York City's school report cards. Schools that receive a high grade indeed improve SAT math scores and increase graduation rates, though by much less than OLS estimates suggest. Selection bias in OLS estimates is egregious for screened schools.

Citation extraction

64
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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Cattaneo, M. D., B. R. Frandsen, and R. Titiunik (2015) Randomization Inference in the Regression Discontinuity Design: An Application to Party Advantages in the US Senate0.92844100%
2Cattaneo, M. D., R. Titiunik, and G. Vazquez-Bare (2017) Comparing Inference Approaches for RD Designs: A Reexamination of the Effect of Head Start on Child Mortality0.84333100%
3Frandsen, B. R (2017) Party Bias in Union Representation Elections: Testing for Manipulation in the Regression Discontinuity Design When the Running V…0.84333100%
4Frolich, M (2007) Regression Discontinuity Design with Covariates (Unpublished Appendix), IZA Discussion Paper No0.84333100%
5Abdulkadiroglu, A., J. D. Angrist, Y. Narita, and P. A. Pathak (2017) Research Design Meets Market Design: Using Centralized Assignment for Impact Evaluation self0.83612558%
6Abdulkadiroglu, A., J. D. Angrist, and P. A. Pathak (2014) The Elite Illusion: Achievement Effects at Boston and New York Exam Schools self0.64422100%
7Abdulkadiroglu, A., P. A. Pathak, and A. E. Roth (2009) Strategy-Proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the New York City High School Match self0.64422100%
8Abdulkadiroglu, A., P. A. Pathak, and A. E. Roth (2005) The New York City High School Match self0.64422100%
9Arai, Y., Y.-C. Hsu, T. Kitagawa, I. Mourifié, and Y. Wan (2019) Testing Identifying Assumptions in Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Designs, Cemmap Working Paper CWP10/190.64422100%
10Armstrong, T. B. and M. Kolesár (2018) Optimal Inference in a Class of Regression Models0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 64 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Nonparametric Treatment Effect Identification in School Choice1.000364
2Causal Effects in Matching Mechanisms with Strategically Reported Preferences0.64441
3Social Interactions in Endogenous Groups0.40511
4Free Discontinuity Regression With an Application to the Economic Effects of Internet Shutdowns0.40511
5Manipulation Test for Multidimensional RDD0.40511
6Regression Discontinuity Aggregation, with an Application to the Union Effects on Inequality0.40511
7Identification Design0.40511