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Synthetic control is a causal inference tool used to estimate the treatment effects of an intervention by creating synthetic counterfactual data. This approach combines measurements from other similar observations (i.e., donor pool ) to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-27 Saeyoung Rho , Rachel Cummings , Vishal Misra

Consider a setting where there are $N$ heterogeneous units and $p$ interventions. Our goal is to learn unit-specific potential outcomes for any combination of these $p$ interventions, i.e., $N \times 2^p$ causal parameters. Choosing a…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-01-17 Abhineet Agarwal , Anish Agarwal , Suhas Vijaykumar

This paper develops a novel nonparametric identification method for treatment effects in settings where individuals self-select into treatment sequences. I propose an identification strategy which relies on a dynamic version of standard…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-12-05 Pedro Picchetti

We present a new estimator for causal effects with panel data that builds on insights behind the widely used difference in differences and synthetic control methods. Relative to these methods we find, both theoretically and empirically,…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-22 Dmitry Arkhangelsky , Susan Athey , David A. Hirshberg , Guido W. Imbens , Stefan Wager

Staggered adoption of policies by different units at different times creates promising opportunities for observational causal inference. Estimation remains challenging, however, and common regression methods can give misleading results. A…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-01-19 Eli Ben-Michael , Avi Feller , Jesse Rothstein

Estimation and inference procedures for synthetic control methods often do not allow for the existence of spillover effects, which are plausible in many applications. In this paper, we consider estimation and inference for synthetic control…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-01-23 Jianfei Cao , Connor Dowd

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

We present a robust generalization of the synthetic control method for comparative case studies. Like the classical method, we present an algorithm to estimate the unobservable counterfactual of a treatment unit. A distinguishing feature of…

Econometrics · Economics 2017-11-21 Muhammad Jehangir Amjad , Devavrat Shah , Dennis Shen

The synthetic control method (SCM) has become a popular tool for estimating causal effects in policy evaluation, where a single treated unit is observed, and a heterogeneous set of untreated units with pre- and post-policy change data are…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-08-21 Jizhou Liu , Eric J. Tchetgen Tchetgen , Carlos Varjão

Difference-in-Differences (DiD) and Synthetic Control (SC) are widely used methods for causal inference in panel data, each with distinct strengths and limitations. We propose a novel method for short-panel causal inference that integrates…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-09-26 Yixiao Sun , Haitian Xie , Yuhang Zhang

This paper proposes a novel approach for estimating treatment effects in panel data settings, addressing key limitations of the standard difference-in-differences (DID) approach. The standard approach relies on the parallel trends…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-01-14 Shoya Ishimaru

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

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

Synthetic control methods (SCMs) are a canonical approach used to estimate treatment effects from panel data in the internet economy. We shed light on a frequently overlooked but ubiquitous assumption made in SCMs of "overlap": a treated…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-02-26 Daniel Ngo , Keegan Harris , Anish Agarwal , Vasilis Syrgkanis , Zhiwei Steven Wu

When there are multiple outcome series of interest, Synthetic Control analyses typically proceed by estimating separate weights for each outcome. In this paper, we instead propose estimating a common set of weights across outcomes, by…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-02-13 Liyang Sun , Eli Ben-Michael , Avi Feller

We consider estimating the conditional average treatment effect for everyone by eliminating confounding and selection bias. Unfortunately, randomized clinical trials (RCTs) eliminate confounding but impose strict exclusion criteria that…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-06-15 Eric V. Strobl , Thomas A. Lasko

To make informed policy recommendations from observational data, we must be able to discern true treatment effects from random noise and effects due to confounding. Difference-in-Difference techniques which match treated units to control…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-09-12 Nicholas Illenberger , Dylan S. Small , Pamela A. Shaw

Clinical trials are typically run in order to understand the effects of a new treatment on a given population of patients. However, patients in large populations rarely respond the same way to the same treatment. This heterogeneity in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-02-12 Alihan Hüyük , Zhaozhi Qian , Mihaela van der Schaar

The synthetic control method (SCM) is widely used for causal inference with panel data, particularly when the number of treated units is small. It relies on the stable unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA), ruling out spillover effects.…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-03-26 Shosei Sakaguchi , Hayato Tagawa

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