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Network Synthetic Interventions: A Causal Framework for Panel Data Under Network Interference

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  • Anish Agarwal
  • Sarah H. Cen
  • Devavrat Shah
  • Christina Lee Yu

Abstract

We propose a generalization of the synthetic controls and synthetic interventions methodology to incorporate network interference. We consider the estimation of unit-specific potential outcomes from panel data in the presence of spillover across units and unobserved confounding. Key to our approach is a novel latent factor model that takes into account network interference and generalizes the factor models typically used in panel data settings. We propose an estimator, Network Synthetic Interventions (NSI), and show that it consistently estimates the mean outcomes for a unit under an arbitrary set of counterfactual treatments for the network. We further establish that the estimator is asymptotically normal. We furnish two validity tests for whether the NSI estimator reliably generalizes to produce accurate counterfactual estimates. We provide a novel graph-based experiment design that guarantees the NSI estimator produces accurate counterfactual estimates, and also analyze the sample complexity of the proposed design. We conclude with simulations that corroborate our theoretical findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Anish Agarwal & Sarah H. Cen & Devavrat Shah & Christina Lee Yu, 2022. "Network Synthetic Interventions: A Causal Framework for Panel Data Under Network Interference," Papers 2210.11355, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2210.11355
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Ruonan Xu, 2023. "Difference-in-Differences with Interference," Papers 2306.12003, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.
    2. Anish Agarwal & Keegan Harris & Justin Whitehouse & Zhiwei Steven Wu, 2023. "Adaptive Principal Component Regression with Applications to Panel Data," Papers 2307.01357, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2023.

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