path.plot {Synth}

Plots Outcome Trajectories for Treated Unit and its Synthetic Control Unit

Description

This function plots the trajectories of the outcome variable for the treated unit and the synthetic control group constructed by synth and dataprep. The user can specify whether the whole time period or only the pretreatment period should be plotted.

Usage

path.plot(synth.res = NA,
dataprep.res = NA,
tr.intake = NA,
Ylab = c("Y Axis"),
Xlab = c("Time"),
Ylim = NA,
Legend=c("Treated","Synthetic"),
Legend.position=c("topright"),
Main = NA,
Z.plot = FALSE)

Arguments

synth.res

Output list created by synth.

dataprep.res

Output list created by dataprep.

tr.intake

Optional scalar to indicate the time of treatment intake with a vertical line.

Ylab

Optional label for Y axis.

Xlab

Optional label for X axis.

Ylim

Optional Ylim.

Main

Optional main title.

Legend

Optional legend text (e.g. c("Treated","Synthetic")); see ?legend for details.

Legend.position

Optional legend position (e.g. "bottomright"); see ?legend for details.

Z.plot

Flag. If true, only pretreatment period is plotted.

Details

The trajectory of the outcome for the synthetic control group is calculated as: dataprep.res$Y0plot%*% synth.res$solution.w. You can use this calculation to construct custom made plots.

Value

The plot of trajectories.

Author(s)

Jens Hainmueller and Alexis Diamond

References

Abadie, A., Diamond, A., Hainmueller, J. (2014). Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method. American Journal of Political Science Forthcoming 2014.

Synthetic : An R Package for Synthetic Control Methods in Comparative Case Studies. Journal of Statistical Software 42 (13) 1–17.

Abadie, A., Diamond, A., Hainmueller, J. (2011). Synth: An R Package for Synthetic Control Methods in Comparative Case Studies. Journal of Statistical Software 42 (13) 1–17.

Abadie A, Diamond A, Hainmueller J (2010). Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California's Tobacco Control Program. Journal of the American Statistical Association 105 (490) 493–505.

Abadie, A. and Gardeazabal, J. (2003) Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country American Economic Review 93 (1) 113–132.

See Also

dataprep, gaps.plot, synth, synth.tab