arXiv 19 Nov 2019 · Econometrics
arXiv:1911.08521 · PDF · Extracted main text
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 unobserved confounders, even when the number of pre-treatment periods goes to infinity. Still, we show that a demeaned version of the SC method can substantially improve in terms of bias and variance relative to the difference-in-difference estimator. We also derive a specification test for the demeaned SC estimator in this setting with imperfect pre-treatment fit. Given our theoretical results, we provide practical guidance for applied researchers on how to justify the use of such estimators in empirical applications.
appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 59% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.
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.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Doudchenko and Imbens (2016) Balancing, regression, difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods: A synthesis | 1.000 | 5 | 3 | 100% |
| 2 | Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller (2010) Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program | 0.985 | 23 | 5 | 96% |
| 3 | Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller (2015) Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method | 0.928 | 4 | 3 | 100% |
| 4 | Ferman (2019) On the Properties of the Synthetic Control Estimator with Many Periods and Many Controls self | 0.920 | 9 | 4 | 78% |
| 5 | Hsiao, Steve Ching and Ki Wan (2012) A Panel Data Approach for Program Evaluation: Measuring the Benefits of Political and Economic Integration of Hong Kong with Mai… | 0.894 | 7 | 3 | 71% |
| 6 | Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country | 0.874 | 7 | 2 | 100% |
| 7 | Carvalho, Masini and Medeiros (2018) ArCo: An Artificial Counterfactual Approach for Aggregate Data | 0.737 | 5 | 3 | 40% |
| 8 | Li and Bell (2017) Estimation of average treatment effects with panel data: Asymptotic theory and implementation | 0.737 | 5 | 3 | 40% |
| 9 | Carvalho, Masini and Medeiros (2016) The Perils of Counterfactual Analysis with Integrated Processes | 0.737 | 4 | 3 | 50% |
| 10 | Ferman and Pinto (2019) Synthetic Controls with Imperfect Pre-Treatment Fit | 0.737 | 4 | 3 | 50% |
Showing the top 10 of 42 scored citations.
arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.