Synthetic Controls with Multiple Outcomes
with Wei Tian (UNSW) and Valentyn Panchenko (UNSW)
We generalize the synthetic control (SC) method to a multiple-outcome framework, where the conventional pre-treatment time dimension is supplemented with the extra dimension of related outcomes in computing the SC weights. This generalization reduces the risk of overfitting and improves the reliability of the SC method, particularly when the number of pre-treatment periods are small. To illustrate our method, we provide a new perspective on the classic SC application to the 1990 German reunification.