Rotterdam Seminars Econometric Institute

Speaker(s)
Marcelo Medeiros (Pontificia Universidade Catolica, Brazil)
Date
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Location
Rotterdam

We consider a new method to conduct counterfactual analysis with aggregate data when a “treated” unit suffers a shock or an intervention, such as a policy change. The proposed approach is based on the construction of an artificial counterfactual from a pool of “untreated” peers, and is inspired by different branches of the literature such as: the Synthetic Control method, the Global Vector Autoregressive models, the econometrics of structural breaks, and the counterfactual analysis based on macro-econometric and panel data models. We derive an asymptotic Gaussian estimator for the average effect of the intervention and present a collection of companion hypothesis tests. We also discuss finite sample properties and conduct a detailed Monte Carlo experiment.