scholarly journals Estimating causal effects of BRI infrastructure projects based on the synthetic control method

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuan Li ◽  
Martin Kleimann ◽  
Hans-Jörg Schmerer
Keyword(s):  
Control Method ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Synthetic Control Method

scholarly journals Joint culpability: The effects of medical marijuana laws on crime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Wei Chu ◽  
W Townsend
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Control Method ◽  
National Level ◽  
Medical Marijuana ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Medical Marijuana Laws

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Most U.S. states have passed medical marijuana laws. In this paper, we study the effects of these laws on violent and property crime. We first estimate models that control for city fixed effects and flexible city-specific time trends. To supplement this regression analysis, we use the synthetic control method which can relax the parallel trend assumption and better account for heterogeneous policy effects. Both the regression analysis and the synthetic control method suggest no causal effects of medical marijuana laws on violent or property crime at the national level. We also find no strong effects within individual states, except for in California where the medical marijuana law reduced both violent and property crime by 20%.

scholarly journals Joint culpability: The effects of medical marijuana laws on crime

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Wei Chu ◽  
W Townsend
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Control Method ◽  
National Level ◽  
Medical Marijuana ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Medical Marijuana Laws

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. Most U.S. states have passed medical marijuana laws. In this paper, we study the effects of these laws on violent and property crime. We first estimate models that control for city fixed effects and flexible city-specific time trends. To supplement this regression analysis, we use the synthetic control method which can relax the parallel trend assumption and better account for heterogeneous policy effects. Both the regression analysis and the synthetic control method suggest no causal effects of medical marijuana laws on violent or property crime at the national level. We also find no strong effects within individual states, except for in California where the medical marijuana law reduced both violent and property crime by 20%.

scholarly journals Decoupling synthetic control methods to ensure stability, accuracy and meaningfulness

SERIEs ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Albalate ◽  
Germà Bel ◽  
Ferran A. Mazaira-Font
Keyword(s):  
Optimization Problem ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Economic Effect ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Control Methods ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Synthetic Control Methods ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Accuracy And Stability

AbstractThe 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.

Applying Synthetic Control Method to Estimate the Impact of the Lava Jato Operation on the Worldwide Governance Indicators in Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 2631309X2110178
Author(s):  
Eduardo Carvalho Nepomuceno Alencar ◽  
Bryant Jackson-Green
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Regulatory Quality ◽  
Legal Judgments ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Control Of Corruption

In 2014, the most prominent anti-corruption investigation in Latin America called Lava Jato, exposed a Brazilian corruption scheme with reverberations in 61 countries, resulting in legal judgments for nearly 5 billion USD in reimbursements thus far. This article applies the synthetic control method on data from 135 countries (2002–2018) to test the hypothesis that Lava Jato impacts the Worldwide Governance Indicators in Brazil. The findings reveal that Lava Jato negatively affects control of corruption, the rule of law, and regulatory quality. There are signs of possible improvement in at least the corruption and the rule of law measures. This paper brings value to the criminological body of literature, notably lacking in the Global South.

scholarly journals When is a Match Sufficient? A Score-based Balance Metric for the Synthetic Control Method

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-228
Author(s):  
Layla Parast ◽  
Priscillia Hunt ◽  
Beth Ann Griffin ◽  
David Powell
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Control Unit ◽  
Treated Group ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Donor Pool ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
The Mean ◽  
The Impact

AbstractIn some applications, researchers using the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the effect of a policy may struggle to determine whether they have identified a “good match” between the control group and treated group. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of the mean and maximum Absolute Standardized Mean Difference (ASMD) as a test of balance between a synthetic control unit and treated unit, and provide guidance on what constitutes a poor fit when using a synthetic control. We explore and compare other potential metrics using a simulation study. We provide an application of our proposed balance metric to the 2013 Los Angeles (LA) Firearm Study [9]. Using Uniform Crime Report data, we apply the SCM to obtain a counterfactual for the LA firearm-related crime rate based on a weighted combination of control units in a donor pool of cities. We use this counterfactual to estimate the effect of the LA Firearm Study intervention and explore the impact of changing the donor pool and pre-intervention duration period on resulting matches and estimated effects. We demonstrate how decision-making about the quality of a synthetic control can be improved by using ASMD. The mean and max ASMD clearly differentiate between poor matches and good matches. Researchers need better guidance on what is a meaningful imbalance between synthetic control and treated groups. In addition to the use of gap plots, the proposed balance metric can provide an objective way of determining fit.

scholarly journals Campaign Finance Regulations and Public Policy

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
MARTIN GILENS ◽  
SHAWN PATTERSON ◽  
PAVIELLE HAINES
Keyword(s):  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Control Method ◽  
Synthetic Control ◽  
Synthetic Control Method ◽  
Citizens United ◽  
Independent Expenditures ◽  
American Elections ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Despite a century of efforts to constrain money in American elections, there is little consensus on whether campaign finance regulations make any appreciable difference. Here we take advantage of a change in the campaign finance regulations of half of the U.S. states mandated by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. This exogenously imposed change in the regulation of independent expenditures provides an advance over the identification strategies used in most previous studies. Using a generalized synthetic control method, we find that after Citizens United, states that had previously banned independent corporate expenditures (and thus were “treated” by the decision) adopted more “corporate-friendly” policies on issues with broad effects on corporations’ welfare; we find no evidence of shifts on policies with little or no effect on corporate welfare. We conclude that even relatively narrow changes in campaign finance regulations can have a substantively meaningful influence on government policy making.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document