Synthetic Control

A comparative-case method that constructs a weighted combination of untreated units to approximate the treated unit before an intervention.

Why It Matters

Synthetic control is useful when a legal reform affects one jurisdiction or institution and ordinary before-after comparison would be too weak.

A short list of directly relevant archive entries.

2010

Advanced

Alberto Abadie, Alexis Diamond, and Jens Hainmueller

Journal of the American Statistical Association

2017

Intermediate

Susan Athey and Guido W. Imbens

Journal of Economic Perspectives

2021

Advanced

Scott Cunningham

Yale University Press