This paper studies the validity of nonparametric tests used in the regression discontinuity design. The null hypothesis of interest is that the average treatment effect at the threshold in the so-called sharp design equals a pre-specified value. We first show that, under assumptions used in the majority of the literature, for any test the power against any alternative is bounded above by its size. This result implies that, under these assumptions, any test with nontrivial power will exhibit size distortions. We next provide a sufficient strengthening of the standard assumptions under which we show that a version of a test suggested in Calonico, Cattaneo, and Titiunik (2014) can control limiting size.

Using a simplified approach developed by Severini and Tripathi (2001), we calculate the semiparametric efficiency bound for the finite-dimensional parameters of censored linear regression models with heteroskedastic errors. Under an additional identification at infinity type assumption, we propose an efficient estimator based on a novel result from Lewbel and Linton (2002). An extension to censored partially linear single-index models is also presented.

We extend the ${\cal M}$ class of unit root tests introduced by Stock (1999, Cointegration, Causality and Forecasting. A Festschrift in Honour of Clive W.J. Granger. Oxford University Press), Perron and Ng (1996, Review of Economic Studies 63, 435–463) and Ng and Perron (2001, Econometrica 69, 1519–1554) to the seasonal case, thereby developing semi-parametric alternatives to the regression-based augmented seasonal unit root tests of Hylleberg, Engle, Granger, and Yoo (1990, Journal of Econometrics 44, 215–238). The success of this class of unit root tests to deliver good finite sample size control even in the most problematic (near-cancellation) case where the shocks contain a strong negative moving average component is shown to carry over to the seasonal case as is the superior size/power trade-off offered by these tests relative to other available tests.

This paper weakens the size and moment conditions needed for typical block bootstrap methods (i.e., the moving blocks, circular blocks, and stationary bootstraps) to be valid for the sample mean of Near-Epoch-Dependent (NED) functions of mixing processes; they are consistent under the weakest conditions that ensure the original NED process obeys a central limit theorem (CLT), established by De Jong (1997, Econometric Theory 13(3), 353–367). In doing so, this paper extends De Jong’s method of proof, a blocking argument, to hold with random and unequal block lengths. This paper also proves that bootstrapped partial sums satisfy a functional CLT (FCLT) under the same conditions.

In this article, we introduce a new class of Cox’s non-nested test statistics for models defined through overidentifying moment restrictions that depend on a finite dimensional parameter vector. In addition to showing that the GEL test statistics proposed in Smith (1997, Economic Journal 107, 503–519) and Ramalho and Smith (2002, Journal of Econometrics 107, 99–125) are members of this class, we reveal that further members can be constructed using the artificial compound model approach, which was originally applied by Atkinson (1970, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 32, 323–335) in the parametric setting. We investigate the asymptotic properties of the statistics and propose tests based on modified versions of these statistics that have correct asymptotic size in a uniform sense, a requirement not satisfied by existing Cox’s non-nested tests. A Monte Carlo study examines the performance of the proposed tests.