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Synthetic Controls in Action

Alberto Abadie, Jaume Vives-i-Bastida

arXiv 11 Mar 2022 · Statistics — Methodology · 24 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2203.06279 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

In this article we propose a set of simple principles to guide empirical practice in synthetic control studies. The proposed principles follow from formal properties of synthetic control estimators, and pertain to the nature, implications, and prevention of over-fitting biases within a synthetic control framework, to the interpretability of the results, and to the availability of validation exercises. We discuss and visually demonstrate the relevance of the proposed principles under a variety of data configurations.

Citation extraction

18
references
33
in-text mentions
18
distinct cited
3
self-citations
10,338
main-text words

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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., Diamond, A., and Hainmueller, J (2010) Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California’s tobacco control program self0.69351100%
2Abadie, A. and L'Hour, J (2021) A penalized synthetic control estimator for disaggregated data self0.69351100%
3Doudchenko, N. and Imbens, G. W (2016) Balancing, regression, difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods: A synthesis0.64441100%
4Ferman, B (2021) On the properties of the synthetic control estimator with many periods and many controls0.58531100%
5Abadie, A (2021) Using synthetic controls: Feasibility, data requirements, and methodological aspects self0.51121100%
6Ben-Michael, E., Feller, A., and Rothstein, J (2021) The augmented synthetic control method0.51121100%
7Acemoglu, D., Johnson, S., Kermani, A., Kwak, J., and Mitton, T (2016) The value of connections in turbulent times: Evidence from the United States0.40511100%
8Agarwal, A., Shah, D., and Shen, D (2021) Synthetic interventions0.40511100%
9Amjad, M., Shah, D., and Shen, D (2018) Robust synthetic control0.40511100%
10Arkhangelsky, D., Athey, S., Hirshberg, D. A., Imbens, G. W., and Wa… (2019) Synthetic difference in differences0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 18 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
1Predictor Selection for Synthetic Controls0.84333
2Splash! Robustifying Donor Pools for Policy Studies0.73732
32206.017790.51121
4Synthetic Principal Component Design: Fast Covariate Balancing with Synthetic Controls0.40511
5Identification and Inference for Synthetic Controls with Confounding0.40511
6Distributionally Robust Synthetic Control: Ensuring Robustness Against Highly Correlated Controls and Weight Shifts0.40511