optconstant: Finds the optimal constant.

In bigmatch: Making Optimal Matching Size-Scalable Using Optimal Calipers

Finds the optimal constant.

Description

Finds the smallest constant k on variable p or rank of p such that a treated-control matching with that constant exists. If exact is not NULL, then finds the smallest constant on p or rank of p such that a treated-control matching with that constant exists while also matching exact for the variable exact. If caliper is NULL, we only consider match treated i to k controls with smallest difference of p or rank of p. If caliper is not NULL and there are more than k controls within that caliper for treated i, then we only consider match it to k controls with smallest difference of p or rank of p.

Usage

optconstant(z, p, caliper=NULL, exact=NULL, ncontrol=1, tol=1, rank=TRUE,
subX=NULL, ties.all=TRUE, seed=1)

Arguments

z	A vector whose ith coordinate is 1 for a treated unit and is 0 for a control.
p	A vector with the same length as z. The best constant for p is found. Often p is the propensity score.
caliper	If two individuals differ on p by more than caliper, there is no edge between this pair. If caliper is too small, the match may be infeasible.
exact	If exact is NULL, then there is no exact matching, and the constant refers to p alone. Otherwise, exact is a vector of the same length as z for exact matching, such that two individuals, i and j, can be matched only if they have the same value of exact, exact[i]=exact[j]. In this case, the constant is best among calipers that permit exact matching for exact. Typically, exact has a moderate number of possible values, far fewer than length(z).
ncontrol	A positive integer giving the number of controls to be matched to each treated subject. If ncontrol is too large, the match will be infeasible.
tol	The tolerance. The optimal constant is determined with an error of at most tol.
rank	An indicator of whether we want a constant on rank of p or p.
subX	If a subset matching is required, the variable that the subset matching is based on. That is, for each level of subX, extra treated will be discarded in order to have the number of matched treated subjects being the minimum size of treated and control groups. If exact matching on a variable x is desired and discarding extra treated is fine if there are more treated than controls for a certain level k, set exact=x, subX=x.
ties.all	If ties.all is True, include all ties while choosing nearest neighbors. In this case, some treated may have more than constant controls. Otherwise, randomly select one or several controls to make sure there are not more than constant controls for each treated.
seed	When ties.all is False, seed for randomly select one or several controls when there are ties.

Details

The method uses binary search to find the optimal constant. At each step in the search, it applies Glover's algorithm to determine whether a proposed constant is feasible.

Often, we need a small and feasible constant, but we do not need to determine the optimal constant very precisely. Making tol larger will reduce the number of steps in the binary search.

Value

constant	The optimal constant, with an error of at most tol. This constant is a little too large, at most tol too large, but because its error is on the high side, a match with this constant does exist.
interval	An interval that contains the best constant. The upper bound of the interval was returned as constant above.
interval.length	The length of interval. By definition, length.interval<=tol.

References

Glover, F. (1967). Maximum Matching In Convex Bipartite Graphs. Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 14, pp 313-316.

Lipski, W., Jr, and Preparata, F. P. (1981). Efficient Algorithms For Finding Maximum Matchings In Convex Bipartite Graphs And Related Problems. Journal Acta Informatica, 15, 4, pp 329-346.

Examples

data(nh0506)
attach(nh0506)

#optimal constant using the propensity score alone
optconstant(z,propens,rank=FALSE)

#optimal constant for the propensity score while requiring
#an exact match for female
optconstant(z,propens,exact=female,rank=FALSE)

#optimal constant for the propensity score given a caliper
oc=optcal(z,propens,tol=0.1,rank=FALSE)
optconstant(z,propens,caliper=oc$caliper,rank=FALSE)
detach(nh0506)

bigmatch documentation built on Aug. 11, 2022, 9:05 a.m.