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Synthetic Difference in Differences

Dmitry Arkhangelsky, Susan Athey, David A. Hirshberg, Guido W. Imbens, Stefan Wager

arXiv 24 Dec 2018 · Statistics — Methodology · publishedAmerican Economic Review (2021) · 90 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1812.09970 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

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, that this "synthetic difference in differences" estimator has desirable robustness properties, and that it performs well in settings where the conventional estimators are commonly used in practice. We study the asymptotic behavior of the estimator when the systematic part of the outcome model includes latent unit factors interacted with latent time factors, and we present conditions for consistency and asymptotic normality.

Citation extraction

64
references
144
in-text mentions
64
distinct cited
10
self-citations
15,460
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_titled_section at “Appendix” · 56% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Alberto Abadie, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller (2010) Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California's tobacco control program1.000105100%
2Marianne Bertrand, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan (2004) How much should we trust differences-in-differences estimates?1.00093100%
3Jushan Bai (2009) Panel data models with interactive fixed effects1.00063100%
4Hyungsik Roger Moon and Martin Weidner (2015) Linear regression for panel with unknown number of factors as interactive fixed effects1.00063100%
5Alberto Abadie, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller (2015) Comparative politics and the synthetic control method1.00054100%
6HR Moon and M Weidner (2017) Dynamic linear panel regression models with interactive fixed effects1.00053100%
7Susan Athey, Mohsen Bayati, Nikolay Doudchenko, Guido Imbens, and Kh… (2017) Matrix completion methods for causal panel data models self0.9507586%
8Nikolay Doudchenko and Guido W Imbens (2016) Balancing, regression, difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods: A synthesis self0.92844100%
9Bruno Ferman and Cristine Pinto (2019) Synthetic controls with imperfect pre-treatment fit0.92843100%
10Yiqing Xu (2017) Generalized synthetic control method: Causal inference with interactive fixed effects models0.92843100%

Showing the top 10 of 64 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Synthetic Parallel Trends1.000335
2Efficient Difference-in-Differences and Event Study Estimators1.000244
3Identification and Inference for Synthetic Controls with Confounding1.000145
4Triply Robust Panel Estimators1.000144
5Sequential Synthetic Difference in Differences1.00074
6Causal Models for Longitudinal and Panel Data: A Survey1.00063
7A Way to Synthetic Triple Difference1.00063
8Synthetic Difference in Differences for Repeated Cross-Sectional Data1.00063
9Correlated Synthetic Controls1.00053
10Estimating Variances for Causal Panel Data Estimators1.00053