Asymptotic Properties of the Distributional Synthetic Controls

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Lu, Zhang, Xiaomeng, Zhang, Xinyu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhang, Lu
Zhang, Xiaomeng
Zhang, Xinyu
author_facet Zhang, Lu
Zhang, Xiaomeng
Zhang, Xinyu
contents As an alternative to synthetic control, the distributional Synthetic Control (DSC) proposed by Gunsilius (2023) provides estimates for quantile treatment effect and thus enabling researchers to comprehensively understand the impact of interventions in causal inference. But the asymptotic properties of DSC have not been built. In this paper, we first establish the DSC estimator's asymptotic optimality in the essence that the treatment effect estimator given by DSC achieves the lowest possible squared prediction error among all potential estimators from averaging quantiles of control units. We then establish the convergence rate of the DSC weights. A significant aspect of our research is that we find the DSC synthesis forms an optimal weighted average, particularly in situations where it is impractical to perfectly fit the treated unit's quantiles through the weighted average of the control units' quantiles. Simulation results verify our theoretical insights.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_00953
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Asymptotic Properties of the Distributional Synthetic Controls
Zhang, Lu
Zhang, Xiaomeng
Zhang, Xinyu
Econometrics
As an alternative to synthetic control, the distributional Synthetic Control (DSC) proposed by Gunsilius (2023) provides estimates for quantile treatment effect and thus enabling researchers to comprehensively understand the impact of interventions in causal inference. But the asymptotic properties of DSC have not been built. In this paper, we first establish the DSC estimator's asymptotic optimality in the essence that the treatment effect estimator given by DSC achieves the lowest possible squared prediction error among all potential estimators from averaging quantiles of control units. We then establish the convergence rate of the DSC weights. A significant aspect of our research is that we find the DSC synthesis forms an optimal weighted average, particularly in situations where it is impractical to perfectly fit the treated unit's quantiles through the weighted average of the control units' quantiles. Simulation results verify our theoretical insights.
title Asymptotic Properties of the Distributional Synthetic Controls
topic Econometrics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00953