Synthetic Control Methods | Jens Hainmueller

The synthetic control method enables researchers to estimate causal effects by constructing a synthetic version of a treatment unit through a weighted combination of control units. It is implemented as both an R package and a Stata routine, based on the methods developed in the following papers Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller (2010), Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller (2015), and Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller (2011). This work was awarded the Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Political Methodology.

Estimating effects with the synthetic control method.

References

Journal Articles

JASA

Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California’s tobacco control program

Alberto Abadie, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller

Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2010

Gosnell Prize DOI Bib HTML PDF

Gosnell Prize for Excellence in Political Methodology awarded for the best work in political methodology presented at any political science conference during the preceding year (https://polmeth.org/gosnell-prize).

@article{abadie2010synthetic,
  title = {Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California’s tobacco control program},
  author = {Abadie, Alberto and Diamond, Alexis and Hainmueller, Jens},
  journal = {Journal of the American Statistical Association},
  volume = {105},
  number = {490},
  pages = {493--505},
  year = {2010},
  publisher = {Taylor and Francis},
  doi = {10.1093/pan/mpr025},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/mpr025},
}

AJPS

Comparative politics and the synthetic control method

Alberto Abadie, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller

American Journal of Political Science, 2015

DOI Bib HTML PDF

@article{abadie2015comparative,
  title = {Comparative politics and the synthetic control method},
  author = {Abadie, Alberto and Diamond, Alexis and Hainmueller, Jens},
  journal = {American Journal of Political Science},
  volume = {59},
  number = {2},
  pages = {495--510},
  year = {2015},
  publisher = {Wiley Online Library},
  doi = {10.1111/ajps.12116 },
  url = { https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12116},
}

JSS

Synth: An R package for synthetic control methods in comparative case studies

Alberto Abadie, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller

Journal of Statistical Software, 2011

DOI Bib HTML PDF

@article{abadie2011synth,
  title = {Synth: An R package for synthetic control methods in comparative case studies},
  author = {Abadie, Alberto and Diamond, Alexis and Hainmueller, Jens},
  journal = {Journal of Statistical Software},
  volume = {42},
  number = {13},
  year = {2011},
  doi = {10.18637/jss.v042.i13},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v042.i13},
}