Statistics & Data Science · Causal Inference
A topic within Causal Inference, itself one of 10 topics in that field and part of Statistics & Data Science.
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Regression Discontinuity Designs: A Guide to Practice
Guido W. Imbens & Thomas Lemieux · 2008
Works through the practical choices in an RD estimate — bandwidth, functional form, manipulation of the running variable near the cutoff — that…
Primary sources and full treatments.
Regression-Discontinuity Analysis: An Alternative to the Ex Post Facto Experiment
Donald L. Thistlethwaite & Donald T. Campbell · 1960
Shows that a treatment assigned purely by whether a score crosses a cutoff lets the jump in outcomes right at the cutoff be read as a treatment…
+1 more at this level
3 works
Guido W. Imbens & Thomas Lemieux
Works through the practical choices in an RD estimate — bandwidth, functional form, manipulation of the running variable near the cutoff — that determine whether the design's credibility survives implementation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Donald L. Thistlethwaite & Donald T. Campbell
Shows that a treatment assigned purely by whether a score crosses a cutoff lets the jump in outcomes right at the cutoff be read as a treatment effect, founding regression discontinuity as a design rather than a regression trick.
link checked 17 Sept 2026David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux
Surveys why RD estimates are unusually credible among observational designs, tracing it to local randomisation near the cutoff, and to the density and covariate-balance tests that let a reader check the assumption directly.
link checked 17 Sept 2026