Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Regression to the Mean's Impact on the Synthetic Control Method: Bias
  and Sensitivity Analysis   To make informed policy recommendations from observational data, we must be
able to discern true treatment effects from random noise and effects due to
confounding. Difference-in-Difference techniques which match treated units to
control units based on pre-treatment outcomes, such as the synthetic control
approach have been presented as principled methods to account for confounding.
However, we show that use of synthetic controls or other matching procedures
can introduce regression to the mean (RTM) bias into estimates of the average
treatment effect on the treated. Through simulations, we show RTM bias can lead
to inflated type I error rates as well as decreased power in typical policy
evaluation settings. Further, we provide a novel correction for RTM bias which
can reduce bias and attain appropriate type I error rates. This correction can
be used to perform a sensitivity analysis which determines how results may be
affected by RTM. We use our proposed correction and sensitivity analysis to
reanalyze data concerning the effects of California's Proposition 99, a
large-scale tobacco control program, on statewide smoking rates.

26
The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
1
The categories of this paper are: cs
19
The categories of this paper are: eess
14
The categories of this paper are: math-ph
21
The categories of this paper are: adap-org
5
The categories of this paper are: gr-qc
34
The categories of this paper are: chem-ph
3
The categories of this paper are: physics
11
The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
29
The categories of this paper are: funct-an
8
The categories of this paper are: hep-ex
2
The categories of this paper are: math
25
The categories of this paper are: patt-sol
35
The categories of this paper are: mtrl-th
28
The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
23
The categories of this paper are: solv-int