Control variables in the rdrobust package 'option covs not allowed'

[Daan Moonen]

Hello all,

Currently busy writing my thesis. I am using an RD design to infer the effect of a certain treatment on economic performance of regions. Not all regions receive treatment in the same year, which i why i need to include time-effects (year as a control variable).
However, when i write the code below i receive the following error time and time again:

rdrobust gdpa eventtime, c(0) covs == year
option covs not allowed


gdpa is my dependent variable and eventtime my running variable (0=year of treatment).

Can anyone help me out with this issue?

[Rich Goldstein]

looking at the help file, it appears that your syntax should be:

rdrobust gdpa eventtime, c(0) covs(year)

that is, put the covariates within the parens not after an equals sign

[Daan Moonen]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for you input; however, i've already tried this. I still get the same error...

rdrobust gdpa eventtime, c(0) covs(year)
option covs() not allowed
r(198);

[William Lisowski]

The original version of the community contributed rdrobust command found in SJ package st0366 did not include the covs() option.

The latest version of rdrobust is as follows.

. which rdrobust
/Users/lisowskiw/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/plus/r/rdrobust.ado
*!version 8.4.1  2021-11-30

If that's not what you have

ado uninstall rdrobust
net install rdrobust, from(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rdpackages/rdrobust/master/stata/)

With this version installed and the example files also downloaded, I had the following successful test based on the example in the help file.

. use rdrobust_senate.dta

. rdrobust vote margin, c(0) covs (population)

Covariate-adjusted sharp RD estimates using local polynomial regression.

      Cutoff c = 0 | Left of c  Right of c            Number of obs =       1297
-------------------+----------------------            BW type       =      mserd
     Number of obs |       595         702            Kernel        = Triangular
Eff. Number of obs |       359         321            VCE method    =         NN
    Order est. (p) |         1           1
    Order bias (q) |         2           2
       BW est. (h) |    17.632      17.632
       BW bias (b) |    27.904      27.904
         rho (h/b) |     0.632       0.632

Outcome: vote. Running variable: margin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            Method |   Coef.    Std. Err.    z     P>|z|    [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------------+------------------------------------------------------------
      Conventional |  7.4359     1.4637   5.0803   0.000    4.56718      10.3047
            Robust |     -          -     4.3122   0.000     4.1072      10.9516
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Covariate-adjusted estimates. Additional covariates included: 1

.

[Daan Moonen]

Thanks for the reply. It worked like a charm, although i did have to replace my current files as well for some reason. So for future readers:
ado uninstall rdrobust net install rdrobust, from(https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rd.../master/stata/) replace all