论文标题

当平行趋势不保持时,差异分析差异之前的匹配的好处和成本

Benefits and costs of matching prior to a Difference in Differences analysis when parallel trends does not hold

论文作者

Ham, Dae Woong, Miratrix, Luke

论文摘要

差异(DID)估计量的差异是基于“平行趋势”假设的流行估计量,这是一个断言,缺乏治疗的治疗组会随着时间的推移而“类似地”变化。为了提高这样的主张,可以通过匹配产生一个比较组,这与治疗前的结果和/或治疗前协变量相似。不幸的是,正如先前指出的那样,这种直觉上吸引人的方法在偏见方面也有成本。为了评估应用程序中匹配的权衡,我们首先在线性结构模型下进行DIT分析之前首先表征匹配的偏差,该模型允许观察到的时间不变和未观察到的混杂因素对结果有时间变化。鉴于我们的框架,我们验证基线协变量上的匹配通常会减少偏差。我们进一步展示了如何在预处理结果上既有成本又有收益的方式。首先,匹配预处理结果部分平衡了未观察到的混杂因素,从而减轻了一些偏见。这种降低与结果的可靠性成正比,这是对结果与潜在协变量耦合的量度。抵消这些收益,匹配还通过破坏DID的第二个差异,通过回归到均值的效果,将偏差注入最终估计值。因此,我们提供了启发式准则,以确定降低匹配的程度可能超过偏见成本的程度。我们通过重新分析了一项主要的周转研究来说明我们的指南,该研究在DIT分析之前使用了匹配,并发现在治疗前结果和观察到的协变量中匹配使估计的治疗效果更加可信。

The Difference in Difference (DiD) estimator is a popular estimator built on the "parallel trends" assumption, which is an assertion that the treatment group, absent treatment, would change "similarly" to the control group over time. To bolster such a claim, one might generate a comparison group, via matching, that is similar to the treated group with respect to pre-treatment outcomes and/or pre-treatment covariates. Unfortunately, as has been previously pointed out, this intuitively appealing approach also has a cost in terms of bias. To assess the trade-offs of matching in our application, we first characterize the bias of matching prior to a DiD analysis under a linear structural model that allows for time-invariant observed and unobserved confounders with time-varying effects on the outcome. Given our framework, we verify that matching on baseline covariates generally reduces bias. We further show how additionally matching on pre-treatment outcomes has both cost and benefit. First, matching on pre-treatment outcomes partially balances unobserved confounders, which mitigates some bias. This reduction is proportional to the outcome's reliability, a measure of how coupled the outcomes are with the latent covariates. Offsetting these gains, matching also injects bias into the final estimate by undermining the second difference in the DiD via a regression-to-the-mean effect. Consequently, we provide heuristic guidelines for determining to what degree the bias reduction of matching is likely to outweigh the bias cost. We illustrate our guidelines by reanalyzing a principal turnover study that used matching prior to a DiD analysis and find that matching on both the pre-treatment outcomes and observed covariates makes the estimated treatment effect more credible.

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