断点回归在政策评估研究中的应用:逻辑、现状与前瞻

A Survey of Regression Discontinuity Design in Policy Evaluation Research:Logic,Status Quo and Prospects

【目的】对断点回归设计(RDD)在政策评估领域的经典和前沿研究进行分类综述,对其在我国政策评估的应用前景进行前瞻与讨论。【文献范围】以“Regression Discontinuity”和“断点回归”为主题词分别在Web of Science(SSCI)和中国知网数据库进行检索,人工构建2008~2022期间的中英文断点回归文献数据库。【方法】采用文献计量方法,从RDD的基本逻辑出发,甄选断点回归设计在不同政策领域的应用研究开展综述评析。【结果】分析揭示,继教育、公卫、环境、公共财政等主要应用领域之后,近年来RDD因果推断在国内外科技政策和图书情报领域的政策评估中开始崭露头角。中国学者运用该方法已取得较大进展。【局限】断点回归的文献范围有待进一步扩充,与其他政策评估方法的比较分析可进一步深入。【结论】断点回归方法自提出以来已被大量应用于教育、公共卫生、环境及科技创新等领域的政策评估研究中,未来该方法可增加与准自然实验等其他研究方法的综合研究,扩展断点回归在我国和国际定量政策评估研究的应用分析。

[Objective]This paper aims to review the classical and cutting-edge research on the Regression Discontinuity Design(RDD)in the field of policy evaluation,and the prospect of its application in policy evaluation in China is prospected and discussed.[Coverage]We used“Regression Discontinuity”as a keyword to search the Web of Science and CNKI databases.The Chinese and English RDD literature databases were manually constructed for the period 2008-2022.[Methods]We used the bibliometric methods to analyze the application of RDD and conducted a systematic review of RDD in different policy areas.[Results]Our analysis shows that in addition to the dominat fields of education,public health,environment,and public administration,RDD has also appeared in science policy studies and in information and library sciences.The Chinese social science community has also witnessed a rapid growth of RDD research over the past decade.[Limitations]The literature on RDD research needs to be further expanded and comparative analysis with other policy evaluation methods can be further deepened.[Conclusions]RDD research has been widely used in policy evaluation research in the fields of education,public health,environment,and science and technology innovation,etc.In the future,the method can be enhanced with other research methods such as quasi-natural experiments,so as to expand the application of RDD in the analysis of China’s quantitative policy evaluation research and the international quantitative policy evaluation research.