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Re: st: Polynomial Fitting and RD Design


From   Nick Cox <[email protected]>
To   "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject   Re: st: Polynomial Fitting and RD Design
Date   Sat, 10 Sep 2011 11:57:16 +0100

This is Stata 7 syntax. It will work in
later versions with the prefix

version 7:

Nick

On 10 Sep 2011, at 11:46, Alex Olssen <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi,

I have a question.  It's not quite on this topic, but it is related to
the replication of Lee, Moretti, and Butler.
In the do-files found in the links in the original post are the
following lines of code

graph meanY100 fit1 fit2 int1U int1L int2U int2L dembin ,
l1(" ") l2("ADA Score, time t") b1(" ") t1(" ") t2(" ")
b2("Democrat Vote Share, time t-1")  xlabel(0,.5,1) ylabel (0,.5,1)
title(" ") xline(.5)
c(.lll[-]l[-]l[-]l[-]) s(oiiii) sort saving(`1'_reduced.gph, replace);
translate `1'_reduced.gph `1'_reduced.eps, replace;

I can't get this to work.  I have never seen the graph command used
like this before - I always used graph twoway, etc.

In any case, the error I get is:
"meanY100graph_g.new fit1 fit2 int1U int1L int2U int2L dembin ,: class
member function not found"

Can anyone help me with this?

Cheers,
Alex
On 6 September 2011 07:40, Patrick Button <[email protected]> wrote:

Thank you for the feedback everyone. It has been extremely useful and now
I am not freaking out as much.

First, i've changed x to x - 0.5 as per Austin Nichols' suggestion. This
makes interpretation easier. I should have done this earlier.

I was thinking that my replication was going to involve critique Nick Cox,
and I agree with you and others that the 4th order polynomials are
somewhat fishy.

The weird thing about the paper is that the authors say that they are
using 4th degree polynomials on either side of the discontinuity, but
their graphs and/or code indicate that they are just using one polynomial to fit the entire thing. Not sure why that is... So in trying to do the 4th degree polynomial for each side on my own, i’ve run into this issue of results being weird. Now that I understand why it makes perfect sense.

As for if the 4th degree polynomial is ideal, I would agree with all of you that it probably is not. If one is going to go with polynomials, the ideal degree depends on the bandwidth you use. Ariel Linden described this
really well earlier.

Larger bandwidths mean more precision, but more bias. Smaller bandwidths (say only using data within +/- 2 percentage points of 50%) lead to the
opposite. Lee and Lemieux (2010)
(http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/tlemieux/papers/RD_JEL.pdf) discuss that the
optimal polynomial degree is a function of the bandwidth.

The ideal degree is determined by the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC).
I'm going to stick with the 4th degree polynomial (and the entire
dataset), then i'll try other polynomials and bandwidths, and then kernel after that. I need to do the replication first, THEN I will critique that by going with something more realistic. The -rd- package should be really
useful for that. Thanks so much for all the discussion about a more
realistic model. The key thing is that results should be robust to several different types of fitting and bandwidths, so long as they are realistic
in the first place.

As for using orthog/orthpoly to generate orthogonal polynomials, I gave
that a shot. Thank you very much for the suggestion Martin Buis.

I've done the orthogonalization two different ways. Both give different
results, neither of which mirror the results where I create the
polynomials in the regular fashion. I'm not sure which method is
"correct". I'm also unsure why the results are significantly different.
Any suggestions would be very helpful.

Orthpoly # 1 uses orthpoly separately on each side of the discontinuity. #
2 does it for all the data.

The code and output are below:

*****

drop if demvoteshare==.
keep if realincome~=.
drop demvs2 demvs3 demvs4

gen double x = demvoteshare - 0.5

gen D = 1 if x >= 0
replace D = 0 if x < 0

*Orthpoly #1

*Creating orthogonal polynomials separately for each side.

orthpoly x if x < 0, deg(4) generate(demvsa demvs2a demvs3a demvs4a)
orthpoly x if x >= 0, deg(4) generate(demvsb demvs2b demvs3b demvs4b)
replace demvsa = 0 if demvsa==.
replace demvsb = 0 if demvsb==.
replace demvs2a = 0 if demvs2a==.
replace demvs2b = 0 if demvs2b==.
replace demvs3a = 0 if demvs3a==.
replace demvs3b = 0 if demvs3b==.
replace demvs4a = 0 if demvs4a==.
replace demvs4b = 0 if demvs4b==.

replace demvsa = (1-D)*demvsa
replace demvs2a = (1-D)*demvs2a
replace demvs3a = (1-D)*demvs3a
replace demvs4a = (1-D)*demvs4a

replace demvsb = D*demvsb
replace demvs2b = D*demvs2b
replace demvs3b = D*demvs3b
replace demvs4b = D*demvs4b

regress realincome D demvsa demvs2a demvs3a demvs4a demvsb demvs2b demvs3b
demvs4b

*Orthpoly #2

orthpoly x, deg(4) generate (demvs demvs2 demvs3 demvs4)

replace demvsa = (1-D)*demvs
replace demvs2a = (1-D)*demvs2
replace demvs3a = (1-D)*demvs3
replace demvs4a = (1-D)*demvs4

replace demvsb = D*demvs
replace demvs2b = D*demvs2
replace demvs3b = D*demvs3
replace demvs4b = D*demvs4

regress realincome D demvsa demvs2a demvs3a demvs4a demvsb demvs2b demvs3b
demvs4b

*****

And the results are:


Orthpoly # 1

--- --- --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 realincome |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf.
Interval]
------------- +----------------------------------------------------------------
          D |  -2597.064   140.5829   -18.47   0.000    -2872.626
-2321.502
     demvsa |  -853.4396   109.0927    -7.82   0.000    -1067.277
-639.6025
    demvs2a |  -941.1276   109.0927    -8.63   0.000    -1154.965
-727.2905
    demvs3a |   593.9881   109.0927     5.44   0.000      380.151
807.8252
    demvs4a |   121.7433   109.0927     1.12   0.264    -92.09384
335.5804
     demvsb |  -2006.552   88.66978   -22.63   0.000    -2180.357
-1832.747
    demvs2b |  -620.1632   88.66978    -6.99   0.000    -793.9685
-446.3579
    demvs3b |  -134.2237   88.66978    -1.51   0.130     -308.029
39.58156
    demvs4b |   457.7355   88.66978     5.16   0.000     283.9302
631.5407
      _cons |    32210.1   109.0927   295.25   0.000     31996.26
32423.93
--- --- --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------


Orthpoly # 2

--- --- --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 realincome |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf.
Interval]
------------- +----------------------------------------------------------------
          D |  -15904.18   22026.78    -0.72   0.470    -59079.79
27271.42
     demvsa |   56141.35   33816.59     1.66   0.097    -10143.95
122426.6
    demvs2a |   42328.68   25413.63     1.67   0.096    -7485.616
92142.98
    demvs3a |   19367.81   11950.96     1.62   0.105    -4057.754
42793.37
    demvs4a |   3038.492   2722.757     1.12   0.264    -2298.496
8375.481
     demvsb |  -40636.36   7469.378    -5.44   0.000     -55277.4
-25995.32
    demvs2b |   47190.86   9181.907     5.14   0.000     29193.03
65188.7
    demvs3b |  -33596.74   6331.021    -5.31   0.000    -46006.43
-21187.04
    demvs4b |   7983.823   1546.578     5.16   0.000      4952.31
11015.33
      _cons |   68128.44   21623.63     3.15   0.002     25743.08
110513.8
--- --- --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------

The results using the earlier method (generating polynomials normally)
gives the following after I change x to x - 0.5:

--- --- --- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 realincome |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf.
Interval]
-------------+--------------------------------------------------





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