存在取整时的阈值操纵量化:以美国饮用水铅监测为例
Quantifying Threshold Manipulation in the Presence of Rounding: The Case of Lead Monitoring in US Drinking Water
AER: Insights · 2025 · [{"name": "Tihitina Andarge", "affiliation": ["University of Massachusetts Amherst"]}, {"name": "Dalia Ghanem", "affiliation": ["University of California, Davis"]}, {"name": "David A. Keiser", "affiliation": ["University of Massachusetts Amherst"]}, {"name": "Gabriel Lade", "affiliation": ["The Ohio State University"]}]
中文摘要
许多法律和经济行为都依赖于阈值。因此，阈值操纵是多种情境下的一个常见关切。现有检测和量化阈值操纵的方法均假定：在不存在操纵的情况下，反事实分布是连续的。但当数据存在四舍五入时，这一假设便被违背；四舍五入在许多应用中普遍存在，且不同于操纵。本文提出了在四舍五入为数据显著特征时检验和量化阈值操纵的方法。我们通过一项实证应用——考察美国《安全饮用水法》下铅监测中的阈值操纵——展示了该方法的有用性。
Abstract
Many laws and economic actions depend on thresholds. As a consequence, threshold manipulation is a common concern in a variety of settings. Existing methods for detecting and quantifying threshold manipulation assume a continuous counterfactual distribution absent manipulation. This assumption is violated in the presence of rounding, which is prevalent in many applications and distinct from manipulation. This paper develops methods for testing and quantifying threshold manipulation when rounding is a prominent feature of the data. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach in an empirical application examining threshold manipulation in lead monitoring under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act.