Regression discontinuity designs are increasingly popular quasi-experimental research designs among applied econometricians desiring to make causal inferences on the local effect of a treatment, intervention, or policy. They are also widely used in social, behavioral, and natural sciences. Much of the existing literature relies on the assumption that the discontinuity point or cutoff is known a-priori, which may not always hold. This thesis seeks to extend the applicability of regression discontinuity designs by proposing a new approach towards detection of an unknown discontinuity point using structural-break detection and machine learning methods. The approach is evaluated on both simulated and real data. Estimation and inference based on estimating the cutoff following this approach are compared to the counterfactual scenario where the cutoff is known. Monte Carlo simulations show that the empirical false-detection and true-detection probabilities of the proposed procedure are generally satisfactory. Finally, the approach is further illustrated with an empirical application. / Graduate

This thesis identifies the effect of traditional political coalitions on the left-right spectrum in Swedish municipal politics on economic outcomes such as Municipal Revenues, Expenditures, Net-expenditures, Municipal Tax-rates, Unemployment, and the share of Municipal Employment. To do so, varying time spans of Swedish municipal data from 1994-2017 are used in a regression discontinuity design, basing its identification on quasi-random variation created by close municipal elections. The results indicate that the left-leaning Red-Green coalition has no isolated impact on economic variables when considering the entire sample, but seems to have a significant impact on some economic variables compared to others when the sample is restricted to decrease the number of mixed coalitions in the sample. These results indicate that the increase in mixed governing coalitions in recent years could have watered down the clear left-right dimension in Swedish politics found in previous research.

At what age people ought to be given the right to vote has become a salient issue in both contemporary Western politics and political science. A prevalent argument opposing lowering the voting age to 16 asserts that 16- and 17-year-olds lack the necessary political competence required of voters. However, the validity of this argument rests upon the assumption that adolescents do not attain the required competence upon enfranchisement. While the idea that political competence improves when given the vote can be traced back to 19th century political theory, empirical investigations of this claim remain scarce. In this thesis, I address this gap in the literature by applying a regression discontinuity (RD) design using eligibility to vote as the cut-off. By surveying the political theory regarding requirements for voting rights, I identify political knowledge and communicative skills as the most relevant competencies. No effect of being eligible to vote can be found on the former, while the results concerning communicative skills are inconclusive and sensitive to model specifications. These findings are consistent with previous RD-studies within this field: gaining the right to vote does not seem to have a significant effect on political knowledge. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on the age of enfranchisement.

<p dir="ltr">Retail prices for eggs surged during the period from early 2022 to mid-2023 in the U.S. Eggs are important to a wide range of people because of their nutritional benefits and cost relative to other protein sources. Thus, rapidly increasing egg prices can cause risks to numerous people. Using social media listening data, we analyzed the relationship between egg prices and online and social media attention and the relationship between egg prices and online and social media sentiment. Our findings suggest that egg prices are associated with the sentiment of the public as expressed in online media. However, the relationship between egg prices and online and social media attention is complex when studying the timing of increased concern with the timing of online news media coverage. Importantly, by leveraging a method of regression discontinuity in time, we show that online and social media conversations about eggs and egg prices tend to increase after the rapid rise in online news coverage. Similarly, online and social media conversations about eggs and egg prices tend to decrease after the rapid rise in online news coverage. This research also provided an example of how a total number of statements and sentiment score of social media listening data can be utilized to capture people’s attention levels, overall sentiment, and how they change over time.</p>

長久以來，性別不平等的狀況持續存在著，尤其在勞動市場方面。在所有能增進性別平等狀況的管道中，本研究檢驗台灣高中職以下的性別平等教育課程，對於學生未來職場上的性別態度之影響。我們假設，當人們覺得性別不平等狀況是不公平的（或覺得性別平等狀況是公平的），代表他/她具有正向的性別態度。利用台灣社會變遷調查2005年第五期第一次：工作與生活組之資料，以及迴歸不連續性設計（Regression Discontinuity Design）暨次序分對數模型（Ordered Logit Model），實證結果顯示女性在勞動市場中處於較不利的位置；性別平等教育對學生未來職場上的性別態度無顯著影響；女性，或受較高等教育者，或對於工作成就感到公平者，具有較顯著的正向性別態度。 / Gender inequity has always been there in the labor market. This paper examines how gender equity education in elementary and high schools affects students’ attitudes towards gender inequity issues in the future. This paper assumes that if people feel gender inequity is unfair, (or feel gender equity is fair), they have positive gender attitudes. Results derived from the data from 2005 Taiwan Social Change Survey (Round 5, Year 1): Work Orientation by using Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) as well as the Ordered Logit Model suggest that women indeed lag behind men in the labor market and that gender equity education has no significant effect on students’ gender attitudes. Females, people with higher education level, and people who feel their current achievement is fair have significantly more positive gender attitudes.

Essay 1 (with Oskar Nordström Skans): This paper provides field evidence on the causal impact of past successes on future performances. Since persistence in success or failure is likely to be linked through, potentially time-varying, ability it is intrinsically difficult to identify the causal effect of succeeding on the probability of performing well in the future. We therefore employ a regression discontinuity design on data from professional golf tournaments exploiting that almost equally skilled players are separated into successes and failures half-way into the tournaments (the “cut”). We show that players who (marginally) succeeded in making the cut substantially increased their performance in subsequent tournaments relative to players who (marginally) failed to make the cut. This success-effect is substantially larger when the subsequent (outcome) tournament involves more prize money. The results therefore suggest that past successes provide an important prerequisite when performing high-stakes tasks. Essay 2: Recent experimental evidence suggests that women in general are more discouraged than men by failures which potentially can explain why women, on average, are less likely than men to reach top-positions in firms. This paper provides the first quasi-experimental evidence from the field on this issue using data from all-female and all-male professional golf tournaments to see if this result can be replicated among competitive men and women. These top-performing men and women are active in an environment with multiple rounds of competition and the institutional set-up of the tournaments makes it possible to causally estimate the effect of the result in one tournament on the performance in the next. The results show that both male and female golfers respond negatively to a failure and that their responses are virtually identical. This finding suggests that women’s difficulties in reaching top-positions in firms are caused by external rather than internal barriers. Essay 3: Voting is a fundamental human right. Yet, individuals that are younger than 18 do typically not have this right since they are considered uninformed. However, recent evidence tentatively suggests that the political knowledge of youths is endogenous to the voting age. I test for the existence of such dynamic adjustments utilizing voting age discontinuities caused by Swedish laws. I employ a regression discontinuity strategy on Swedish register data to estimate the causal effect of early age voting right on political knowledge around age 18. The results do not support the existence of positive causal effects of early age voting right on political knowledge. Thus, we should not expect that 16-year-olds respond by acquiring more political knowledge if they are given the right to vote. This finding weakens the case for a lowering of the voting age from 18 to 16. Essay 4 (with Lena Hensvik): We postulate that firms’ production losses  from absence depend on the employees’ internal substitutability, incentivizing firms to keep absence low in positions with few substitutes. Using Swedish employer-employee data we show that absence is substantially lower in such positions even conditional on establishment and occupation fixed effects. The result reflects sorting on both entry and exit margins, with stronger separations responses when it was difficult to predict the absence of the employees beforehand. These findings highlight that internal substitution insures firms against production disruptions caused by absence and that absence costs are important aspects of firms’ hiring and separations decisions.

Cette thèse s’articule autour de trois essais. Le premier chapitre analyse l'impact des 27 ans de guerre civile en Angola sur les dépenses par équivalent adulte, le capital humain et la fécondité. La prédiction des effets de la guerre se fait à l’aide d’un modèle néoclassique de ménage unitaire dans la tradition de Rosenzweig. A partir de l’approche d’estimation par variable instrumentale, cette thèse montre que la guerre civile a un impact négatif et désastreux à court terme sur la santé des enfants, cet effet est persistant. La guerre civile n’a pas d’impact sur les dépenses par équivalent adulte. Elle accroit lascolarisation et décroit la fécondité à court terme. Le second chapitre de cette thèse analyse l’efficacité d’un programme social dans un environnement en conflit comme celui de l’Angola et s’interroge si cette efficacité dépend de l’intensité du conflit. Notre stratégie d’identification est basée sur la géographie politique du déploiement du programme basée sur un modèle de compétition spatiale à la Hotelling. Cette thèse montre que le Fond Social Angolais a eu un impact positif sur les dépenses par équivalent adulte et sur l’une des principales mesures anthropométriques à savoir le z-Score de la taille pour âge. L’efficacité du programme en fonction de l’intensité du conflit est analysée à l’aide de l’estimateur de variable instrumental local. La thèse montre que l’efficacité du programme augmente avec l’intensité du conflit. Le dernier chapitre de cette thèse analyse dans le cas du Cameroun, l’impact de la formation des enseignants en matière de VIH/SIDA. Les deux critères retenus pour le choix des écoles participant au programme, nous amène à choisir comme stratégie d’identification la régression discontinue. Cette thèse montre que les filles âgées de 15 à 17 ans dans les écoles traitées sont moins susceptibles d’avoir une grossesse involontaire. Pour les élèves âgés de 12 à 13 ans, la probabilité d'abstinence auto déclarée et l'utilisation du préservatif est également significativement plus élevé dans les écoles traitées / This thesis is based on three essays. The first chapter analyses the impact of 27 years of civil war in Angola on human capital, expenditures per adult equivalent and fertility. The prediction of the effects of civil war is done through a neoclassical unitary household model in the tradition of Rosenzweig. Using instrumental variable method, this thesis shows that civil war has a negative and disastrous impact in short-Term on health of children, this effect is persistent. Civil war has no impact on expenditures per adult equivalent. It increases enrollment and decreases fertility in the short term. The second chapter ofthis thesis analyzes the effectiveness of a social program in a conflict country such as Angola and explores whether this effectiveness depends on the intensity of the conflict. Our identification strategy is based on the political geography of the deployment of the program based on a model of spatial competition of Hotelling. This thesis shows that the Angola Social Fund had a positive impact on expenditures per adult equivalent and on one of the main anthropometric measurements namely the height for age z-Score. The program's effectiveness in function to the intensity of the conflict is analyzed using the local instrumental variable estimator. The thesis shows that the program's effectiveness increases with the intensity of the conflict. The last chapter of this thesis analyzes in the case of Cameroon, the impact of teacher training on HIV/AIDS. The two criteria for selecting participating schools, leads us to choose as identification strategy the regression discontinuity design. This thesis shows that 15 to 17 year old girls in teacher training schools are between 7 and 10 percentage points less likely to have started childbearing. For 12 to 13 year old girls, the likelihood of self-Reported abstinence and condom use is also significantly higher in treated schools.

L’aléa moral est une source de distorsion économique. La prédiction classique dans un cadre simple est qu’une meilleure couverture conduit à un effort moindre. Cette thèse étudie dans quelle mesure cette prédiction est ou non vérifiée empiriquement dans des cadres plus complexes. Le premier chapitre s’intéresse aux absences pour raison de santé. La politique étudiée est le jour de carence pour arrêt maladie dans la fonction publique de l’Etat en France. Cette politique de remboursement moins généreuse a notamment pour but de réduire l’absentéisme. Elle conduit à une baisse de la prévalence des absences de courte durée. Mais elle conduit aussi à une hausse de la prévalence des absences de longue durée. En conséquence, la prévalence de l’ensemble des absences pour raison de santé reste inchangée. Les deux chapitres suivants s’intéressent aux systèmes de bonus-malus d’un assureur automobile irlandais. Le deuxième chapitre s’intéresse à l’introduction d’un état très protecteur : la protection à vie du bonus. Cette protection est octroyée automatiquement et gratuitement aux assurés sous des conditions restrictives d’historique de sinistre et d’ancienneté. Comparé à la situation dans laquelle cet état protecteur n’existe pas, le taux de sinistre des assurés protégés augmente, tandis que le taux de sinistre des agents non protégés diminue, dans l’espoir d’être récompensés par la protection. L’existence de la protection est à l’origine d’un transfert intertemporel. Les assurés renoncent à de l’utilité présente en exerçant un effort supérieur, afin d’être récompensés par la protection et de profiter d’une utilité future plus élevée due à un effort moindre. Le troisième chapitre étudie la réaction juste après que l’assuré est récompensé par la protection à vie du bonus. Le taux de sinistre augmente immédiatement, mais seulement quand la protection existe depuis quelque temps. Cela suggère que l'effet d'un changement incitatif dépend de sa nature, mais aussi de son contexte. / Moral hazard is a source of economic distortion. The classical prediction in a simple framework is that a better coverage leads to a lower effort. This thesis studies the extent to which this prediction is empirically verified in more complex settings. The first chapter focuses on health-related absences. The policy under study is the one-day waiting period for sick leave in the French central civil service. This less generous reimbursement policy notably aims at reducing absenteeism. It leads to a decrease in the prevalence of short-term absences. But it also leads to an increase in the prevalence of long-term absences. As a result, the prevalence of all health-related absences stay unchanged. The two following chapters focus on bonus-malus systems used by an Irish car insurer. The second chapter focuses of the introduction on a highly protecting state: the lifetime bonus protection. This protection is granted automatically and freely to insurees under restrictive conditions on past claims and seniority. Compared to the situation in which this protecting state does not exist, the claims rate of protected insurees increases, but the claims rate of unprotected insurees decreases, in the hope of being rewarded with the protection. The existence of the protection induces an intertemporal transfer. Insurees waive present utility by exerting more effort, so as to be rewarded with the protection and to enjoy more future utility due to lower future effort. The third chapter studies the reaction just after the insuree is rewarded with the lifetime bonus protection. The claims rate increases immediately, but only when the protection exists for some time. This suggests that the effect of an incentive change depends on its nature, but also on its context.

Submitted by Alessandro Ribeiro de Carvalho Casalecchi (alercc@gmail.com) on 2017-07-03T21:17:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Alessandro_Casalecchi.pdf: 2174297 bytes, checksum: 27298549cf220c58b7eb52f7323446d7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2017-07-04T11:10:20Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Alessandro_Casalecchi.pdf: 2174297 bytes, checksum: 27298549cf220c58b7eb52f7323446d7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-05T13:46:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese_Alessandro_Casalecchi.pdf: 2174297 bytes, checksum: 27298549cf220c58b7eb52f7323446d7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-05-25 / Os dois artigos desta tese, os capítulos 2 e 3, referem-se a testes de hipótese mas têm focos diferentes. O capítulo 2, intitulado "Improvements for external validity tests in fuzzy regression discontinuity designs," apresenta condições --- hipóteses de continuidade, monotonicidade estrita e convergência pontual --- sob as quais testes de qualidade de ajuste para duas amostras podem ser usados para testes de validade externa em modelos de tratamento-controle que sofrem de "compliance" imperfeito. Modelos com "compliance" imperfeito permitem a estimação de efeitos de tratamento apenas para a subpopulação de "compliers", sendo que tais estimativas não são necessariamente válidas para outras subpopulações ("always-takers" e "never-takers"). Sob as condições do capítulo 2, o uso do teste de qualidade de ajuste no lugar do teste de diferença de médias representa um avanço para testes de validade externa, uma vez que mais hipóteses alternativas são detectáveis pelo primeiro teste. Sugerimos combinar duas estatísticas de teste de qualidade de ajuste (uma para tratados e outra para não tratados) na forma de um teste múltiplo ao invés de um teste conjunto. O capítulo 3, intitulado "Higher-order UMP tests", sugere uma estratégia para se escolher, dentro de um conjunto de estatísticas de teste disponíveis, aquela que fornece o teste mais poderoso quando as funções de poder dos testes em questão não podem ser diferenciadas através de métodos assintóticos usuais, como análise de poder local ("local power analysis"). Propomos o uso de aproximações assintóticas de ordem mais alta, como expansões de Edgeworth, para se aproximar as densidades amostrais das estatísticas disponíveis e, com isso, verificar-se quais delas possuem a propriedade da razão monotônica de verossimilhança. Tal propriedade implica, pelo Teorema de Karlin-Rubin, que o teste é uniformemente mais poderoso (UMP) --- ao menos até certa ordem de aproximação --- se a estatística for suficiente para o parâmetro relevante. Para o caso em que as estatísticas sendo comparadas não são suficientes, argumentamos que frequentemente elas podem se tornar suficientes para uma família paramétrica de interesse após reparametrizações apropriadas. Para fins de ilustração, nós aplicamos o método proposto para determinar o valor ótimo, em termos de poder, do parâmetro de suavização do estimador de densidade por kernel em bases de dados simuladas e concluímos que a ordem de aproximação usada nesta aplicação (segunda ordem) não é alta o suficiente para permitir a diferenciação das funções de poder associadas aos diferentes valores do parâmetro de suavização. / The two papers in this work, chapters 2 and 3, regard hypothesis testing but address different issues. Chapter 2, entitled "Improvements for external validity tests in fuzzy regression discontinuity designs", shows conditions --- assumptions of continuity, strict monotonicity and pointwise convergence --- under which two-sample goodness-of-fit (GOF) tests can be used to test for external validity in treatment-control models that suffer from imperfect compliance of units with respect to the assigned treatment. Imperfect compliance allows researchers to estimate only treatment effects for the subpopulation of compliers, and the validity of these estimates for other subpopulations (always-takers and never-takers) remains an open problem. Under the conditions in Chapter 2, the use of GOF tests in place of mean difference tests represents an improvement over other external validity tests in the literature, since more alternative hypotheses are detectable by the test statistic. We suggested to combine two GOF test statistics (one for the treated and one for the untreated) in a multiple test instead of a joint test. Chapter 3, entitled "Higher-order UMP tests", suggests a strategy to choose among candidate test statistics, according to a power criterion, when their power performances are not distinguishable by usual methods of asymptotic comparison like local power analysis. We propose the use of higher-order asymptotic expansions, like Edgeworth expansions, to approximate the sample densities of the candidate test statistics and verify which of them has the monotone likelihood ratio property. This property implies, by the Karlin-Rubin Theorem, that the test is uniformly most powerful (UMP) --- at least to an order of approximation --- if the statistic is sufficient for the relevant parameter. When the statistics under study are not sufficient, we argue that they can often be made sufficient for a desired parametric family after appropriate reparameterization. We applied the method to search for the power-optimal bandwidth for the kernel density estimator in simulated data sets, and concluded that the order of approximation that we used (second order) is still too low to allow us to distinguish among bandwidths.

Essay I: Employment Security Agreements, which are elements of Swedish collective agreements, offer a unique opportunity to study very early job search counselling of displaced workers. These agreements provide individual job search assistance to workers who are dismissed due to redundancy, often as early as during the period of notice. Compared to traditional labor market policies, the assistance provided is earlier and more responsive to the needs of the individual worker. In this study, I investigate the effects of the individual counseling and job search assistance provided through the Employment Security Agreement for Swedish blue-collar workers on job finding and subsequent job quality. The empirical strategy is based on the rules of eligibility in a regression discontinuity framework. I estimate the effect for workers with short tenure, who are dismissed through mass-layoffs. My results do not suggest that the program has an effect on the probability of becoming unemployed, the duration of unemployment, or income. However, the results indicate that the program has a positive effect on the duration of the next job. Essay II: The well-known positive relationship between the unemployment benefit level and unemployment duration can be separated into two potential sources; a moral hazard effect, and a liquidity effect pertaining to the increased ability to smooth consumption. The latter is a socially optimal response due to credit and insurance market failures. These two effects are difficult to separate empirically, but the social optimality of an unemployment insurance policy can be evaluated by studying the effect of a non-distortionary lump-sum severance grant on unemployment durations. In this study, I evaluate the effects on unemployment duration and subsequent job quality of a lump-sum severance grant provided to displaced workers, by means of a Swedish collective agreement. I use a regression discontinuity design, based on the strict age requirement to be eligible for the grant. I find that the lump-sum grant has a positive effect on the probability of becoming unemployed and the length of the completed unemployment duration, but no effect on subsequent job quality. My analysis also indicates that spousal income is important for the consumption smoothing abilities of displaced workers, and that the grant may have a greater effect in times of more favorable labor market conditions. Essay III: Evidence from around the world suggest that individuals who are awarded disability benefits in some cases still have residual working capacity, while disability insurance systems typically involve strong disincentives for benefit recipients to work. Some countries have introduced policies to incentivize disability insurance recipients to use their residual working capacities on the labor market. One such policy is the continuous deduction program in Sweden, introduced in 2009. In this study, I investigate whether the financial incentives provided by this program induce disability insurance recipients to increase their labor supply or education level. Retroactively determined eligibility to the program with respect to time of benefit award provides a setting resembling a natural experiment, which could be used to estimate the effects of the program using a regression discontinuity design. However, a simultaneous regime change of disability insurance eligibility causes covariate differences between treated and controls, which I adjust for using a matching strategy. My results suggest that the financial incentives provided by the program have not had any effect on labor supply or educational attainment.