Daylight Saving Time and Robbery Rate in the US: Replicating the Doleac and Sanders (2015) Results

The US will experience permanent daylight saving time (DST) upon the passage of an active bill Sunshine Protection Act. To inform policy in preparation for a permanent DST, I am motivated to replicate Doleac and Sanders (2015) in a wide sense and study how DST shifts affect the robbery rate in the context of the contemporary US. Using the same regression discontinuity design but with a newer and larger dataset from the same source, I do not find any effect of the switch to DST or the switch from DST to standard time on the robbery rate for average US counties. Further heterogeneity analysis finds rural counties experience a significant robbery reduction following the shift out of DST compared to urban counties. However, most of this reduction is short-lived, quickly replaced by a significant increase in robberies after a week.