Synthetic Controls: A Tool That's Changing Economics

The synthetic control method has been described as the most important innovation to evaluate policies in the past 15 years. Here's a short introduction to how synthetic controls work. We explain how synthetic controls can be used to determine whether German unification benefitted or harmed West Germany.

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#economics #datascience

[ruchikaagarwal]

This video really helped. Keep up the good work.

[ziwang]

Thank you so much for the video Weiwen! Very clear and concrete!!! Looking forward for more of your videos!

[glaswasser]

lovely vid, and thanks for explaining it in non-technical terms!

[the__shrike]

Would be interesting to see a similar analysis performed on East Germany. I think that many Germans would agree that if East Germany saw more growth than would have been the case without unification, this project can be seen as a success, even if West Germany has lagged slightly. In any case, I don't think you can view this in purely economic terms. Surely Germany has gained in geopolitical influence following the unification, acting as an essential bridge between east and west in the EU.

[weiwenleung]

Thanks for watching this video! As mentioned, this video describes the key idea. Please check the references in the video description, as there's so much more to it! I hope to produce a video that explains more concepts (e.g. cross-validation, selection of donor pool, statistical inference) at some point.

[michaeldodwell]

I'm looking forward to the Korea video

[toyinoluwatuyi]

Which GDP are we comparing? The GDP of WG post 1990 or pre 1990?