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Synthetic Interventions

Author

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  • Anish Agarwal
  • Devavrat Shah
  • Dennis Shen

Abstract

The synthetic controls (SC) methodology is a prominent tool for policy evaluation in panel data applications. Researchers commonly justify the SC framework with a low-rank matrix factor model that assumes the potential outcomes are described by low-dimensional unit and time specific latent factors. In the recent work of [Abadie '20], one of the pioneering authors of the SC method posed the question of how the SC framework can be extended to multiple treatments. This article offers one resolution to this open question that we call synthetic interventions (SI). Fundamental to the SI framework is a low-rank tensor factor model, which extends the matrix factor model by including a latent factorization over treatments. Under this model, we propose a generalization of the standard SC-based estimators. We prove the consistency for one instantiation of our approach and provide conditions under which it is asymptotically normal. Moreover, we conduct a representative simulation to study its prediction performance and revisit the canonical SC case study of [Abadie-Diamond-Hainmueller '10] on the impact of anti-tobacco legislations by exploring related questions not previously investigated.

Suggested Citation

  • Anish Agarwal & Devavrat Shah & Dennis Shen, 2020. "Synthetic Interventions," Papers 2006.07691, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2006.07691
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.
    2. Muhummad Amjad & Vishal Misra & Devavrat Shah & Dennis Shen, 2019. "mRSC: Multi-dimensional Robust Synthetic Control," Papers 1905.06400, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2019.
    3. Michael E. Tipping & Christopher M. Bishop, 1999. "Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 61(3), pages 611-622.
    4. Ian T. Jolliffe, 1982. "A Note on the Use of Principal Components in Regression," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 31(3), pages 300-303, November.
    5. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    6. repec:cup:cbooks:9780521885881 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Bair, Eric & Hastie, Trevor & Paul, Debashis & Tibshirani, Robert, 2006. "Prediction by Supervised Principal Components," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 119-137, March.
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    Cited by:

    1. Joseph Fry, 2023. "A Method of Moments Approach to Asymptotically Unbiased Synthetic Controls," Papers 2312.01209, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2024.

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