“Waiting for Life to Arrive”: A history of the regression-discontinuity design in Psychology, Statistics and Economics

This paper reviews the history of the regression discontinuity design in three academic disciplines. It describes the design's birth and subsequent demise in Psychology even though most problems with it had been solved there. It further describes the scant interest shown in the design by schola...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of econometrics Vol. 142; no. 2; pp. 636 - 654
Main Author Cook, Thomas D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.02.2008
Elsevier
Elsevier Sequoia S.A
SeriesJournal of Econometrics
Subjects
Academic discipline
Econometrics
Economic history
Economics
History of
In Psychology
Psychology
Regression analysis
Regression discontinuity
Statistics
Studies
Economics
B23
C21
In Psychology
History of
Regression discontinuity
Statistics
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Summary:This paper reviews the history of the regression discontinuity design in three academic disciplines. It describes the design's birth and subsequent demise in Psychology even though most problems with it had been solved there. It further describes the scant interest shown in the design by scholars formally trained in Statistics, and the design's poor reception in Economics from 1972 until about 1995, when its profile and acceptance changed. Reasons are given for this checkered history that is characterized as waiting for life to arrive.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0304-4076
1872-6895
DOI:10.1016/j.jeconom.2007.05.002