MIT Libraries logoDSpace@MIT

MIT
View Item 
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • View Item
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • MIT Open Access Articles
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching

Author(s)
King, Gary; Nielsen, Richard Alexander
Thumbnail
DownloadSubmitted version (395.1Kb)
Open Access Policy

Open Access Policy

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike

Terms of use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
We show that propensity score matching (PSM), an enormously popular method of preprocessing data for causal inference, often accomplishes the opposite of its intended goal - thus increasing imbalance, inefficiency, model dependence, and bias. The weakness of PSM comes from its attempts to approximate a completely randomized experiment, rather than, as with other matching methods, a more efficient fully blocked randomized experiment. PSM is thus uniquely blind to the often large portion of imbalance that can be eliminated by approximating full blocking with other matching methods. Moreover, in data balanced enough to approximate complete randomization, either to begin with or after pruning some observations, PSM approximates random matching which, we show, increases imbalance even relative to the original data. Although these results suggest researchers replace PSM with one of the other available matching methods, propensity scores have other productive uses.
Date issued
2019-05
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128459
Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Journal
Political Analysis
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Citation
King, Gary and Richard Nielsen. "Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching." Political Analysis 27, 4 (May 2019): 435-454. © 2019 The Author(s)
Version: Original manuscript
ISSN
1047-1987
1476-4989

Collections
  • MIT Open Access Articles

Show Statistical Information

Browse

All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

Login

Statistics

OA StatisticsStatistics by CountryStatistics by Department
MIT Libraries
PrivacyPermissionsAccessibilityContact us
MIT
Content created by the MIT Libraries, CC BY-NC unless otherwise noted. Notify us about copyright concerns.