Does Health Behavior Change After Diagnosis? Evidence From Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity

Abstract

We investigate whether receiving health information changes human behavior by using a novel approach to inference in the fuzzy regression discontinuity design. The approach is robust to the strength of identification and allows for mean squared error optimal bandwidths as well as undersmoothing. It is based on the Anderson-Rubin test in the instrumental variable literature augmented with either robust bias correction or critical value adjustment. We find that the resulting confidence sets of the treatment effect are mostly wide or even unbounded. These findings indicate that we could not rule out most magnitudes of behavior change, including zero and non-zero ones.