Affiliation:
1. Department of Economics, Harvard University
2. Harvard Business School
Abstract
This paper notes a simple connection between synthetic control and online learning. Specifically, we recognize synthetic control as an instance of
Follow‐The‐Leader (FTL). Standard results in online convex optimization then imply that, even when outcomes are chosen by an adversary, synthetic control predictions of counterfactual outcomes for the treated unit perform almost as well as an oracle weighted average of control units' outcomes. Synthetic control on differenced data performs almost as well as oracle weighted difference‐in‐differences, potentially making it an attractive choice in practice. We argue that this observation further supports the use of synthetic control estimators in comparative case studies.
Funder
National Bureau of Economic Research
Subject
Economics and Econometrics
Cited by
3 articles.
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