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Splash! Robustifying Donor Pools for Policy Studies

Jared Amani Greathouse, Mani Bayani, Jason Coupet

arXiv 25 Aug 2023 · Econometrics · 2 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2308.13688 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

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 estimation open to biases, especially when researchers have many potential donors. We compare how functional principal component analysis synthetic control, forward-selection, and the original synthetic control method select donors. To do this, we use Gaussian Process simulations as well as policy case studies from West German Reunification, a hotel moratorium in Barcelona, and a sugar-sweetened beverage tax in San Francisco. We then summarize the implications for policy research and provide avenues for future work.

Citation extraction

58
references
111
in-text mentions
58
distinct cited
1
self-citations
9,310
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
1Amjad, Muhammad, Shah, Devavrat, Shen, Dennis (2018) Robust synthetic control0.92843100%
2Abadie, Alberto, Diamond, Alexis, Hainmueller, Jens (2015) Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method0.874132100%
3Bel, Germà, Joseph, Stephan, Mazaira-Font, Ferran A (2022) The effects of moratoriums on hotel building: an anti-tourism measure, or rather protection for local incumbents?0.87462100%
4Bayani, Mani (2021) Robust PCA Synthetic Control self0.87452100%
5Marinello, Samantha, Leider, Julien, Powell, Lisa M (2021) Employment impacts of the San Francisco sugar-sweetened beverage tax 2 years after implementation0.87452100%
6Shi, Zhentao, Huang, Jingyi (2023) Forward-selected panel data approach for program evaluation0.87452100%
7Abadie, Alberto, Vives-i-Bastida, Jaume (2022) Synthetic Controls in Action0.73732100%
8Agarwal, Anish, Shah, Devavrat, Shen, Dennis, Song, Dogyoon (2021) On Robustness of Principal Component Regression0.73732100%
9Abadie, Alberto, L’Hour, Jérémy (2021) A Penalized Synthetic Control Estimator for Disaggregated Data0.64422100%
10Abadie, Alberto (2021) Using Synthetic Controls: Feasibility, Data Requirements, and Methodological Aspects0.58531100%

Showing the top 10 of 58 scored citations.