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SUMMARY:An Anatomy of Event Studies: Hypothetical Experiments\, Exact Deco
 mposition\, and Weighting Diagnostics - José R. Zubizarreta\, Harvard Uni
 versity 
DTSTART:20241213T173000Z
DTEND:20241213T180000Z
UID:TALK225301@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Martina Scauda
DESCRIPTION:%{color:red}*Zoom Link available upon request*%\n\nIn recent d
 ecades\, event studies have emerged as a central methodology in health and
  social research for evaluating the causal effects of staggered interventi
 ons. In this paper\, we analyse event studies from experimental design pri
 nciples for observational studies\, with a focus on information borrowing 
 across measurements. We develop robust weighting estimators that increasin
 gly use more information across units and time periods\, justified by incr
 easingly stronger assumptions on the treatment assignment and potential ou
 tcomes mechanisms. As a particular case of this approach\, we offer a nove
 l decomposition of the classical dynamic two-way fixed effects (TWFE) regr
 ession estimator for event studies. Our decomposition is expressed in clos
 ed form and reveals in finite samples the hypothetical experiment that TWF
 E regression adjustments approximate. This decomposition offers insights i
 nto how standard regression estimators borrow information across different
  units and times\, clarifying and supplementing the notion of forbidden co
 mparison noted in the literature. The proposed approach enables the genera
 lisation of treatment effect estimates to a target population and offers n
 ew diagnostics for event studies\, including covariate balance\, sign reve
 rsal\, effective sample size\, and the contribution of each observation to
  the analysis. We also provide visualisation tools for event studies and i
 llustrate them in a case study of the impact of divorce reforms on female 
 suicide.\n\nPreprint available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.17399
LOCATION:MR20\,  Centre for Mathematical Sciences\, Wilberforce Road\, Cam
 bridge
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