This paper investigates the impact of drug decriminalization in Portugal using the Synthetic Control Method. The applied econometric methodology compares Portuguese drug-related variables with the ones extracted from a convex combination of similar European countries. The results suggest that a...

Whether China's low fertility rate is the consequence of the country's strict population control policy is a puzzling question. This paper attempts to disentangle the Chinese population control policy's impacts on the fertility rate from socioeconomic factors using the synthetic control method...

We exploit a recent state-level reform in Germany that granted parents the right to decide on the highest secondary school track suitable for their child, changing the purpose of the primary teacher's recommendation from mandatory to informational. Applying a disaggregated synthetic control...

Recently, there has been a growing interest in newly developed econometric tools to conduct counterfactual analysis when a treated unit experiences a policy intervention, and an artificial control group has to be constructed. Adopting novel penalized synthetic control methods, we quantify the...

This study examines the repercussions of the 1979 Sandinista revolution on Nicaragua's economic growth trajectory. Drawing on the synthetic control method, it constructs an artificial counterpart to Nicaragua with the primary objective of estimating the counterfactual gross domestic product...

When there are multiple outcome series of interest, Synthetic Control analyses typically proceed by estimating separate weights for each outcome. In this paper, we instead propose estimating a common set of weights across outcomes, by balancing either a vector of all outcomes or an index or...

This paper estimates the effect of having joined the monetary union on the income per capita of six early adopters of the euro using the synthetic control method. Our estimates suggest that while the income per capita of Belgium, France, Germany and Italy would have been higher without the euro,...

We estimate the effect of an electricity tax on aggregate electricity consumption with the synthetic control method. The tax was introduced in the Swiss city of Basel in 1999 and, together with other tariff changes, increased marginal electricity prices by 5.4-8.0%. We compare the actual and a...

This paper is a quasi-replication of Andersson (2019). I use the synthetic control method to estimate the effect of a carbon tax starting at $1.41 per tonne of CO2 and increased through successive reforms to $20 by 2011. The results show that, one year after the intervention, the tax reduced CO2...

This paper is a quasi-replication of Andersson (2019). I use the synthetic control method to estimate the effect of a carbon tax starting at $1.41 per tonne of CO2 and increased through successive reforms to $20 by 2011. The results show that, one year after the intervention, the tax reduced CO2...