Decoupling synthetic control methods to ensure stability, accuracy and meaningfulness

Artikel

The synthetic control method (SCM) is widely used to evaluate causal effects under quasi-experimental designs. However, SCM suffers from weaknesses that compromise its accuracy, stability and meaningfulness, due to the nested optimization problem of covariate relevance and counterfactual weights. We propose a decoupling of both problems. We evaluate the economic effect of government formation deadlock in Spain-2016 and find that SCM method overestimates the effect by 0.23 pp. Furthermore, we replicate two studies and compare results from standard and decoupled SCM. Decoupled SCM offers higher accuracy and stability, while ensuring the economic meaningfulness of covariates used in building the counterfactual.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Journal: SERIEs - Journal of the Spanish Economic Association ; ISSN: 1869-4195 ; Volume: 12 ; Year: 2021 ; Issue: 4 ; Pages: 549-584

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models: Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models ; Studies of Particular Policy Episodes ; Structure, Scope, and Performance of Government
• Thema: Synthetic control ; SHAP ; Regularization ; Quasi-experiments ·Causality ; Government

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Albalate, Daniel ; Bel, Germà ; Mazaira-Font, Ferran A.
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Springer
• (wo): Heidelberg
• (wann): 2021

Weitere Informationen

• DOI: doi:10.1007/s13209-021-00242-8
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:44 MEZ