R Observatory: Metrics for gsynth version 1.4.0

Balamuta, James Joseph

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21843040

gsynth

1.4.0Package record

Generalized Synthetic Control Method

0packages dependsuggested by 1

23.2Kdownloads / year

100.0%test coverage

13/13flavors OK

Overview

About

Maintained by Yiqing XuCRAN page ↗GitHub ↗Website ↗Issues ↗

Conducts causal inference with interactive fixed-effect models. It imputes counterfactuals for each treated unit using control group information based on a linear interactive fixed effects model that incorporates unit-specific intercepts interacted with time-varying coefficients. This method generalizes the synthetic control method to the case of multiple treated units and variable treatment periods, and improves efficiency and interpretability. See Xu (2017) doi:10.1017/pan.2016.2 for details.

Changes in 1.4.0

**Breaking change**: The estimator parameter now maps directly to estimation methods. estimator = "gsynth" (new default) uses the generalized synthetic control method (Xu 2017); estimator = "ife" uses the IFE-EM algorithm (Gobillon & Magnac 2016); estimator = "mc" uses matrix completion (Athey et al. 2021). The legacy EM = TRUE parameter is equivalent to estimator = "ife" when estimator is not explicitly specified.
Fixed loadings plot warnings from GGally::ggpairs (upstream fix in **fect**).
Replaced pkgdown vignette with Quarto book tutorial.
Updated DESCRIPTION: added BugReports, Encoding, GitHub URL.

From NEWS.md in the release

Install

R (CRAN)pak (dev)Ubuntu (r2u)Fedora (COPR)openSUSE (OBS)

install.packages("gsynth", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")

Installs the current CRAN release. Prebuilt binaries on Windows and macOS.

if (!requireNamespace("pak", quietly = TRUE))
  install.packages("pak", repos = "https://cloud.r-project.org/")
pak::pak("xuyiqing/gsynth")

Development version from xuyiqing/gsynth. Installs pak first if it is not already available.

Release

# enable cranapt (r2u) if it is not already set up, then install
grep -rqs r2u.stat.illinois.edu /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ \
  || curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eddelbuettel/r2u/master/inst/scripts/add_cranapt_noble.sh | sudo bash
sudo apt install -y r-cran-gsynth

Fast Ubuntu binaries via r2u (no compilation). The cranapt setup runs once and is skipped when it is already enabled. We list this channel from recorded r2u download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

bspm (used by r2u) also needs make: sudo apt install make

# enable the iucar/cran COPR if it is not already present, then install
ls /etc/yum.repos.d/*iucar*cran*.repo >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || sudo dnf copr enable -y iucar/cran
sudo dnf install -y R-CRAN-gsynth

RPMs from the iucar/cran COPR, rebuilt from CRAN.

For install.packages() integration in R, also: sudo dnf install R-CoprManager

# add the autoCRAN OBS repo (Tumbleweed) if it is missing, then install
zypper -q lr | grep -qi autoCRAN \
  || sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/R:/autoCRAN/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/devel:languages:R:autoCRAN.repo
sudo zypper install -y R-gsynth

RPMs auto-built from CRAN on openSUSE OBS (Tumbleweed). We list this channel from recorded autoCRAN download activity rather than from a live index of the repository, so treat it as last known rather than guaranteed.

Health

CRAN checks

13OK

CRAN check page ↗

Slowest check: 2.7 min · r-oldrel-windows-x86_64

Status changes

OK13 OK2026-09-09
ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-09-04
OK13 OK2026-08-05
NOTE12 OK, 1 NOTE2026-08-01
OK13 OK2026-06-09

Show 2 earlier changesHide 2 earlier changes

ERROR12 OK, 1 ERROR2026-06-08
OK14 OK2026-03-10

Advisories

none known

How this is measured·How advisories are found

Documentation

In release 1.4.0

README· In the repository, left out of the releaseVignettesNoNEWSYes · 100% structured · mentions 1.4.0Citation fileNoWebsiteYes

Help pages: 8 (2 internal)includes a package overview page
Examples that run: 100%1 run in a plain check
Exported functions with examples: 50%
Documented parameters: 100%
Return-value docs: 100%
Help pages citing references: 88%

How these are measured

Downloads

23.2K

CRAN downloads in the past year

Rank #2,790 · ~63/day · ~1.9K/mo

Releases R versions

Daily download trend is not available in this view yet.

1.5K30 days

5.3K90 days

23.2K1 year

Compare downloads with other packages →

Also on621 r2u4 autocran432 conda_forge151 c2d4u

How downloads are counted

Repository

xuyiqing/gsynth ↗Account: xuyiqing

155Stars

46Forks

0Open issues

0Open PRs

2Releases

114Commits

8Commit identities

114 commits · Last activity 2026-03-27 · 0% stars, 30d

Responsiveness

How these are sampled

PRs merged (all time): 50%
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed issues: 1,834
Median days to close, 50 most recently updated closed PRs: 10

Stars over time

2025-07-22 · 1402026-09-30 · 155

How these are measured

PracticesBeta

2 development-tooling and community-health practices detected across 2 families in the upstream repository

Checks run against github.com/xuyiqing/gsynth on 2026-10-18.

Docs source (1)

README.Rmd

Lint, format, editor (1)

RStudio project

How this is detected·Detection ruleset v3 (2026-09-26)

AI coding toolsBeta

This repository shows signs of AI coding tools.

Claude Codefirst seen 2026-03-20
Pull request it wrote: opened by a project member
Commits: at least 3 crediting it in the message

Models named in its commits

Claude Opus 4.63 commits · Mar 2026

Counts are commits, not lines of code. Commits by a tool's accounts count once across all of its accounts. Commits crediting it are the largest count among its credit lines, a minimum.How this is detected·Detection ruleset v4 (updated 2026-09-27)

Dependencies

Declared dependencies

4 external dependencies (excludes base and recommended)

Installing gsynth adds 65 packages (26 with compiled code, 55 MB of source tarballs). Heaviest: stringi 11 MB, ggplot2 6.0 MB, fixest 4.8 MB.

Depends (1)

R >= 2.10

Imports (3)

ggplot2 fect panelView

LinkingTo (0)

none

Suggests (1)

testthat

Enhances (0)

none

Dependency license breakdown →

Reverse dependencies

0direct

0indirect

Suggested by 1

Suggests, most downloaded first

bsynth

How these are counted

Code & Tests

Datasets

People & History

People (4)

Yiqing Xu

Author, Maintainer since 1.0.2 (2017)

Shiyun Hu

Author · added in 1.3.1

Licheng Liu

Author · added in 1.0.5

Ziyi Liu

Author · added in 1.3.1

Listed in earlier versions (2)

University of California

no longer listed · 1.0.2 to 1.0.3

San Diego

no longer listed · 1.0.2 to 1.0.3

Releases (8)

Pick two releases to compare their code metrics.

R
R 4.6.0 released · 2026-04-24
1.4.0Latest
record
2026-03-27 · current release · diff ↗
1.3.1
record
2025-12-09 · diff ↗ ·
removed 2 exports
interFE, cumuEff

added 1 export
effect
R
R 4.5.0 released · 2025-04-11
R
R 4.4.0 released · 2024-04-24
R
R 4.3.0 released · 2023-04-21
R
R 4.2.0 released · 2022-04-22
1.2.1
record
2021-08-06 · diff ↗ ·
added 1 export
cumuEff
R
R 4.1.0 released · 2021-05-18
R
R 4.0.0 released · 2020-04-24
R
R 3.6.0 released · 2019-04-26
1.0.9
record
2018-08-25 · diff ↗
R
R 3.5.0 released · 2018-04-23
1.0.6
record
2017-10-16 · diff ↗
1.0.5
record
2017-10-12 · diff ↗
R
R 3.4.0 released · 2017-04-21

Show 3 earlier eventsHide 3 earlier events

1.0.3
record
2017-03-13 · diff ↗ ·
removed 1 export
pattern:^[[:alpha:]]+
1.0.2
record
2017-03-12
R
R 3.3.0 released · 2016-05-03

Package metadata

First published: 2017-03-12
Total releases: 8 / 9 yrs
License: MIT + file LICENSE OSI · relicensed from GPL-2 in 1.2.1
Minimum R: ≥ 2.10
Bundled data: 62 KB / 1 file
Download size: 90 KB

Appears in task views

Causal Inference Econometrics Missing Data

Cite

Cite this package

Run in R for the authors' preferred citation:

citation("gsynth")

Format

Xu, Y., Hu, S., Liu, L., & Liu, Z. (2026). gsynth: Generalized Synthetic Control Method (Version 1.4.0) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.32614/CRAN.package.gsynth

This package has no citation file, so citation() returns this entry built from DESCRIPTION.

Cite the R Observatory

For a number measured here: a download total, a coverage figure, an archival date.

Format

APA

Balamuta, J. J. (2026). R Observatory: Metrics for gsynth version 1.4.0 [Data set]. HJJB, LLC. Data release v2026-10-22. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21843040

From data release v2026-10-22, which the citation names so these numbers can be found later. More on citing and the projects behind them.

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