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Related papers: A Relaxation Approach to Synthetic Control

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Synthetic control methods often rely on matching pre-treatment characteristics (called predictors) of the treated unit. The choice of predictors and how they are weighted plays a key role in the performance and interpretability of synthetic…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-01-02 Jaume Vives-i-Bastida

Counterfactual estimation using synthetic controls is one of the most successful recent methodological developments in causal inference. Despite its popularity, the current description only considers time series aligned across units and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-03 Alexis Bellot , Mihaela van der Schaar

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) is a widely used tool for evaluating causal effects of policy changes in panel data settings. Recent studies have extended its framework to accommodate complex outcomes that take values in metric spaces,…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-01-13 Ryo Okano , Daisuke Kurisu

Mixed-frequency data, where variables are observed at different temporal resolutions, commonly occur in economic and financial studies. Classical synthetic control methods (SCM) are ill-suited for such data, often necessitating aggregation…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-13 Lu Zhang , Shijin Gong , Xinyu Zhang

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

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

When evaluating the impact of a policy on a metric of interest, it may not be possible to conduct a randomized control trial. In settings where only observational data is available, Synthetic Control (SC) methods provide a popular…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-09-24 Muhummad Amjad , Vishal Misra , Devavrat Shah , Dennis Shen

Policy researchers using synthetic control methods typically choose a donor pool in part by using policy domain expertise so the untreated units are most like the treated unit in the pre intervention period. This potentially leaves…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-08-29 Jared Amani Greathouse , Mani Bayani , Jason Coupet

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…

General Economics · Economics 2024-07-29 Wei Tian , Seojeong Lee , Valentyn Panchenko

This article extends the widely-used synthetic controls estimator for evaluating causal effects of policy changes to quantile functions. The proposed method provides a geometrically faithful estimate of the entire counterfactual quantile…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-01-03 Florian Gunsilius

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

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

Estimating causal effects on time-to-event outcomes from observational data is particularly challenging due to censoring, limited sample sizes, and non-random treatment assignment. The need for answering such "when-if" questions--how the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-19 Jessy Xinyi Han , Devavrat Shah

In causal inference with observational studies, synthetic control (SC) has emerged as a prominent tool. SC has traditionally been applied to aggregate-level datasets, but more recent work has extended its use to individual-level data. As…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-28 Saeyoung Rho , Andrew Tang , Noah Bergam , Rachel Cummings , Vishal Misra

Iterative Synthetic Control Method is introduced in this study, a modification of the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) designed to improve its predictive performance by utilizing control units affected by the treatment in question. This…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-05-06 Andrii Melnychuk

To infer the treatment effect for a single treated unit using panel data, synthetic control methods construct a linear combination of control units' outcomes that mimics the treated unit's pre-treatment outcome trajectory. This linear…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-05-07 Hongxiang Qiu , Xu Shi , Wang Miao , Edgar Dobriban , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

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

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

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