Related papers: Large-Sample Properties of the Synthetic Control M…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The synthetic control method is a an econometric tool to evaluate causal effects when only one unit is treated. While initially aimed at evaluating the effect of large-scale macroeconomic changes with very few available control units, it…
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…
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.…
We analyze the properties of the Synthetic Control (SC) and related estimators when the pre-treatment fit is imperfect. In this framework, we show that these estimators are generally biased if treatment assignment is correlated with…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We generalize the synthetic control (SC) method to a multiple-outcome framework, where the conventional pre-treatment time dimension is supplemented with the extra dimension of related outcomes in computing the SC weights. This…
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…
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…
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…
Popular empirical strategies for policy evaluation in the panel data literature -- including difference-in-differences (DID), synthetic control (SC) methods, and their variants -- rely on key identifying assumptions that can be expressed…