Experimental Design under Network Interference

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Viviano, Davide
Format: Preprint
Published: 2020
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author Viviano, Davide
author_facet Viviano, Davide
contents This paper studies how to design two-wave experiments in the presence of spillovers for precise inference on treatment effects. We consider units connected through a single network, local dependence among individuals, and a general class of estimands encompassing average treatment and average spillover effects. We introduce a statistical framework for designing two-wave experiments with networks, where the researcher optimizes over participants and treatment assignments to minimize the variance of the estimators of interest, using a first-wave (pilot) experiment to estimate the variance. We derive guarantees for inference on treatment effects and regret guarantees on the variance obtained from the proposed design mechanism. Our results illustrate the existence of a trade-off in the choice of the pilot study and formally characterize the pilot's size relative to the main experiment. Simulations using simulated and real-world networks illustrate the advantages of the method.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2003_08421
institution arXiv
publishDate 2020
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Experimental Design under Network Interference
Viviano, Davide
Econometrics
Methodology
This paper studies how to design two-wave experiments in the presence of spillovers for precise inference on treatment effects. We consider units connected through a single network, local dependence among individuals, and a general class of estimands encompassing average treatment and average spillover effects. We introduce a statistical framework for designing two-wave experiments with networks, where the researcher optimizes over participants and treatment assignments to minimize the variance of the estimators of interest, using a first-wave (pilot) experiment to estimate the variance. We derive guarantees for inference on treatment effects and regret guarantees on the variance obtained from the proposed design mechanism. Our results illustrate the existence of a trade-off in the choice of the pilot study and formally characterize the pilot's size relative to the main experiment. Simulations using simulated and real-world networks illustrate the advantages of the method.
title Experimental Design under Network Interference
topic Econometrics
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.08421