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Testing for equivalence of pre-trends in Difference-in-Differences estimation

Holger Dette, Martin Schumann

arXiv 24 Oct 2023 · Econometrics · publishedJournal of Business and Economic Statistics (2024) · 27 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2310.15796 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

The plausibility of the “parallel trends assumption” in Difference-in-Differences estimation is usually assessed by a test of the null hypothesis that the difference between the average outcomes of both groups is constant over time before the treatment. However, failure to reject the null hypothesis does not imply the absence of differences in time trends between both groups. We provide equivalence tests that allow researchers to find evidence in favor of the parallel trends assumption and thus increase the credibility of their treatment effect estimates. While we motivate our tests in the standard two-way fixed effects model, we discuss simple extensions to settings in which treatment adoption is staggered over time.

Citation extraction

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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
1Berger, Roger L and Hsu, Jason C (1996) Bioequivalence trials, intersection-union tests and equivalence confidence sets0.92843100%
2Hartman, Erin and Hidalgo, F. Daniel (2018) An Equivalence Approach to Balance and Placebo Tests0.92843100%
3Wooldridge, Jeffrey M (2021) Two-way fixed effects, the two-way mundlak regression, and difference-in-differences estimators0.87462100%
4Di Tella, Rafael and Schargrodsky, Ernesto (2004) Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack0.87452100%
5Donohue, John J and Ho, D and Leahy, Patrick (2013) Do police reduce crime? A reexamination of a natural experiment0.73732100%
6Ariella Kahn-Lang and Kevin Lang (2020) The Promise and Pitfalls of Differences-in-Differences: Reflections on 16 and Pregnant and Other Applications0.73732100%
7Roth, Jonathan (2022) Pretest with Caution: Event-Study Estimates after Testing for Parallel Trends0.73732100%
8Rambachan, Ashesh and Roth, Jonathan (2023) A More Credible Approach to Parallel Trends0.73732100%
9Borusyak, Kirill and Jaravel, Xavier and Spiess, Jann (2023) Revisiting event study designs: Robust and efficient estimation0.64422100%
10Fang, Zheng and Santos, Andres (2019) Inference on directionally differentiable functions0.58531100%

Showing the top 10 of 39 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
1Difference-in-Differences Designs: A Practitioner's Guide0.51121
2Practically significant differences between conditional distribution functions0.40511
3Using Pre-Trends for Inference in Difference-in-Differences0.40511
4Difference-in-differences with as few as two cross-sectional units – A new perspective to the democracy–growth debate0.00021