EconBase
← All papers

Using Multiple Outcomes to Improve the Synthetic Control Method

Liyang Sun, Eli Ben-Michael, Avi Feller

arXiv 27 Nov 2023 · Econometrics · publishedThe Review of Economics and Statistics (2025) · 4 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2311.16260 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

When there are multiple outcome series of interest, Synthetic Control analyses typically proceed by estimating separate weights for each outcome. In this paper, we instead propose estimating a common set of weights across outcomes, by balancing either a vector of all outcomes or an index or average of them. Under a low-rank factor model, we show that these approaches lead to lower bias bounds than separate weights, and that averaging leads to further gains when the number of outcomes grows. We illustrate this via a re-analysis of the impact of the Flint water crisis on educational outcomes.

Citation extraction

37
references
82
in-text mentions
37
distinct cited
2
self-citations
7,353
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 49% 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, Diamond and Hainmueller (2010) Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program1.00083100%
2Tian, Lee and Panchenko (2023) Synthetic Controls with Multiple Outcomes: Estimating the Effects of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions in the COVID-19 Pandemic1.00074100%
3Ferman and Pinto (2021) Synthetic Controls with Imperfect Pre-Treatment Fit1.00053100%
4Ben-Michael, Feller and Rothstein (2021) The Augmented Synthetic Control Method0.9285480%
5Trejo, Yeomans-Maldonado and Jacob (2024) The Effects of the Flint water crisis on the educational outcomes of school-age children0.9209378%
6Arkhangelsky, Athey, Hirshberg, Imbens and Wager (2021) Synthetic Difference-in-Differences0.64422100%
7Amjad, Misra, Shah and Shen (2019) mRSC: Multi-dimensional Robust Synthetic Control0.64422100%
8Tian (2021) Three Essays on Individual Causal Inference0.64422100%
9Ferman (2021) On the Properties of the Synthetic Control Estimator with Many Periods and Many Controls0.5112250%
10Doudchenko and Imbens (2017) Difference-In-Differences and Synthetic Control Methods: A Synthesis0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 37 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
1Compositional Synthetic Controls0.96194
2Temporal Aggregation for the Synthetic Control Method0.92853
3Difference-in-differences with as few as two cross-sectional units – A new perspective to the democracy–growth debate0.84353
4Inference for Synthetic Controls via Refined Placebo Tests0.58531
5Synthetic Parallel Trends0.51121
6Using Multiple Outcomes to Adjust Standard Errors for Spatial Correlation0.40511
7Causal Forecasting in Panel Data: A Two-Way Synthetic Forecasting Approach0.40511