Inference in Regression Discontinuity Designs with High-Dimensional Covariates

We study regression discontinuity designs in which many covariates, possibly much more than the number of observations, are available. We consider a two-step algorithm which first selects the set of covariates to be used through a localized Lasso-type procedure, and then, in a second step, estimates the treatment effect by including the selected covariates into the usual local linear estimator. We provide an in-depth analysis of the algorithm's theoretical properties, showing that, under an approximate sparsity condition, the resulting estimator is asymptotically normal, with asymptotic bias and variance that are conceptually similar to those obtained in low-dimensional settings. Bandwidth selection and inference can be carried out using standard methods. We also provide simulations and an empirical application.