Alexis Diamond

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the applicability of synthetic control methods to comparative case studies and found that, following Proposition 99, tobacco consumption fell markedly in California relative to a comparable synthetic control region, and that by the year 2000 annual per-capita cigarette sales in California were about 26 packs lower than what they would have been in the absence of Proposition 99.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the use of the synthetic control method (Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003; Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller, 2010) as a way to bridge the quantitative/qualitative divide in comparative politics.

TL;DR: In this paper, a method of multivariate matching that uses an evolutionary search algorithm to determine the weight each covariate is given is presented. But it does not address the problem of covariate balance.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the use of the synthetic control method as a way to bridge the quantitative/qualitative divide in comparative politics, and illustrate the main ideas behind the Synthetic Control method by estimating the economic impact of the 1990 German reunification on West Germany.

TL;DR: The R package Synth as discussed by the authors implements synthetic control methods for comparative case studies designed to estimate the causal effects of policy interventions and other events of interest (Abadie and Gardeazabal 2003; Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller 2010).