IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2606.20435.html

Choosing A Headline Estimand from Matching, DID, and Hybrid Designs: A Minimax-Regret Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Yechan Park
  • Yuya Sasaki

Abstract

Researchers using panel data to estimate causal effects routinely choose among three approaches to using past outcomes: difference-in-differences (DID), conditioning on lagged outcomes (matching, M), and a hybrid that does both (DIDM). The corresponding identifying assumptions are non-nested, leaving little guidance on which to report. We give conditions under which the corresponding estimands are ordered, with DIDM bracketed between matching and DID. This makes DIDM the minimax-regret choice among the three under a broad class of loss functions. We recommend reporting DIDM as the headline estimate, with matching and DID as bounds. We illustrate in applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Yechan Park & Yuya Sasaki, 2026. "Choosing A Headline Estimand from Matching, DID, and Hybrid Designs: A Minimax-Regret Approach," Papers 2606.20435, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2606.20435
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.20435
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2606.20435. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.