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Tree-based Synthetic Control Methods: Consequences of moving the US Embassy

Nicolaj Søndergaard Mühlbach, Mikkel Slot Nielsen

arXiv 9 Sep 2019 · Econometrics · 4 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1909.03968 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We recast the synthetic controls for evaluating policies as a counterfactual prediction problem and replace its linear regression with a nonparametric model inspired by machine learning. The proposed method enables us to achieve accurate counterfactual predictions and we provide theoretical guarantees. We apply our method to a highly debated policy: the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem. In Israel and Palestine, we find that the average number of weekly conflicts has increased by roughly 103% over 48 weeks since the relocation was announced on December 6, 2017. By using conformal inference and placebo tests, we justify our model and find the increase to be statistically significant.

Citation extraction

52
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appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 72% 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
1Abadie, A., A. Diamond, and J. Hainmueller (2010) Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: estimating the effect of Californias tobacco control program1.000134100%
2Chernozhukov, V., K. Wuthrich, and Y. Zhu (2017) An exact and robust conformal inference method for counterfactual and synthetic controls0.87462100%
3Doudchenko, N. and G. W. Imbens (2017) Balancing, regression, difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods: a synthesis0.87452100%
4Breiman, L (2001) Random forests0.7374450%
5Wager, S. and G. Walther (2015) Adaptive concentration of regression trees, with application to random forests0.6444250%
Chernozhukovunmatched citation key Chernozhukov0.64441100%
Duflounmatched citation key Duflo0.64441100%
8Abadie, A. and J. Gardeazabal (2003) The economic costs of conflict: a case study of the Basque country0.64422100%
9Raleigh, C., A. Linke, H. Hegre, and J. Karlsen (2010) Introducing ACLED: an armed conflict location and event dataset: special data feature0.64422100%
10Athey, S., J. Tibshirani, and S. Wager (2019) Generalized random forests0.58531100%

Showing the top 10 of 143 scored citations. 2 of these could not be matched to a bibliography entry, so only the citation key is shown.