Crossover Natural Experiment — Within-Unit Causal Inference from Exogenous Policy Shifts

A crossover natural experiment exploits an externally imposed condition — a policy change, law, or environmental event — that exposes the same units (individuals, regions, firms) to both treatment and control states at different times. By observing each unit in multiple conditions, researchers use within-unit variation to estimate causal effects without researcher-controlled randomization, combining the internal validity advantage of crossover designs with the real-world relevance of natural experiments.