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We consider the asymptotic properties of the Synthetic Control (SC) estimator when both the number of pre-treatment periods and control units are large. If potential outcomes follow a linear factor model, we provide conditions under which…

Econometrics · Economics 2020-05-27 Bruno Ferman

To estimate the causal effect of an intervention, researchers need to identify a control group that represents what might have happened to the treatment group in the absence of that intervention. This is challenging without a randomized…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-20 Robert Pickett , Jennifer Hill , Sarah Cowan

Synthetic Control methods have recently gained considerable attention in applications with only one treated unit. Their popularity is partly based on the key insight that we can predict good synthetic counterfactuals for our treated unit.…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-07-15 Tzvetan Moev

A common approach to constructing a Synthetic Control unit is to fit on the outcome variable and covariates in pre-treatment time periods, but it has been shown by Ferman and Pinto (2019) that this approach does not provide asymptotic…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-03-07 Joseph Fry

We propose a sensitivity analysis for Synthetic Control (SC) treatment effect estimates to interrogate the assumption that the SC method is well-specified, namely that choosing weights to minimize pre-treatment prediction error yields…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-02-23 Billy Ferguson , Brad Ross

This paper provides new insights into the asymptotic properties of the synthetic control method (SCM). We show that the synthetic control (SC) weight converges to a limiting weight that minimizes the mean squared prediction risk of the…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-11-23 Xiaomeng Zhang , Wendun Wang , Xinyu Zhang

The synthetic control (SC) method is a popular approach for estimating treatment effects from observational panel data. It rests on a crucial assumption that we can write the treated unit as a linear combination of the untreated units. This…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-27 Achille Nazaret , Claudia Shi , David M. Blei

Since their introduction in Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003), Synthetic Control (SC) methods have quickly become one of the leading methods for estimating causal effects in observational studies in settings with panel data. Formal discussions…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-07-20 Lea Bottmer , Guido Imbens , Jann Spiess , Merrill Warnick

This paper extends the literature on the theoretical properties of synthetic controls to the case of non-linear generative models, showing that the synthetic control estimator is generally biased in such settings. I derive a lower bound for…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-11-23 Oscar Engelbrektson

We analyze the synthetic control (SC) method in panel data settings with many units. We assume the treatment assignment is based on unobserved heterogeneity and pre-treatment information, allowing for both strictly and sequentially…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-12-27 Dmitry Arkhangelsky , David Hirshberg

Synthetic control (SC) methods are commonly used to estimate the treatment effect on a single treated unit in panel data settings. An SC is a weighted average of control units built to match the treated unit, with weights typically…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-21 Xu Shi , Kendrick Li , Wang Miao , Mengtong Hu , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

Synthetic Control Methods (SCMs) have become a fundamental tool for comparative case studies. The core idea behind SCMs is to estimate treatment effects by predicting counterfactual outcomes for a treated unit using a weighted combination…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-11-10 Masahiro Kato , Akari Ohda

The synthetic control method (SCM) estimates causal effects in panel data with a single-treated unit by constructing a counterfactual outcome as a weighted combination of untreated control units that matches the pre-treatment trajectory. In…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-13 Yuxin Wang , Dennis Frauen , Emil Javurek , Konstantin Hess , Yuchen Ma , Stefan Feuerriegel

This paper studies inference on treatment effects in panel data settings with unobserved confounding. We model outcome variables through a factor model with random factors and loadings. Such factors and loadings may act as unobserved…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-12-05 Guido W. Imbens , Davide Viviano

Uncertainty quantification is a fundamental problem in the analysis and interpretation of synthetic control (SC) methods. We develop conditional prediction intervals in the SC framework, and provide conditions under which these intervals…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-09-09 Matias D. Cattaneo , Yingjie Feng , Rocio Titiunik

Synthetic control methods are widely used to estimate the treatment effect on a single treated unit in time-series settings. A common approach to estimate synthetic control weights is to regress the treated unit's pre-treatment outcome and…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-03-06 Chan Park , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

The synthetic control method (SCM) is a popular approach for estimating the impact of a treatment on a single unit in panel data settings. The "synthetic control" is a weighted average of control units that balances the treated unit's…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-07-24 Eli Ben-Michael , Avi Feller , Jesse Rothstein

Synthetic control (SC) methods have been widely applied to estimate the causal effect of large-scale interventions, e.g., the state-wide effect of a change in policy. The idea of synthetic controls is to approximate one unit's…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-12-15 Claudia Shi , Dhanya Sridhar , Vishal Misra , David M. Blei

The synthetic control method (SCM) is a popular approach for estimating the impact of a treatment on a single unit with panel data. Two challenges arise with higher frequency data (e.g., monthly versus yearly): (1) achieving excellent…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-04-16 Liyang Sun , Eli Ben-Michael , Avi Feller

Synthetic control (SC) methods have gained rapid popularity in economics recently, where they have been applied in the context of inferring the effects of treatments on standard continuous outcomes assuming linear input-output relations. In…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-02-19 Alicia Curth , Hoifung Poon , Aditya V. Nori , Javier González
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