Dynamic treatment effects: high-dimensional inference under model misspecification

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Yuqian, Ji, Weijie, Bradic, Jelena
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
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author Zhang, Yuqian
Ji, Weijie
Bradic, Jelena
author_facet Zhang, Yuqian
Ji, Weijie
Bradic, Jelena
contents Estimating dynamic treatment effects is crucial across various disciplines, providing insights into the time-dependent causal impact of interventions. However, this estimation poses challenges due to time-varying confounding, leading to potentially biased estimates. Furthermore, accurately specifying the growing number of treatment assignments and outcome models with multiple exposures appears increasingly challenging to accomplish. Double robustness, which permits model misspecification, holds great value in addressing these challenges. This paper introduces a novel "sequential model doubly robust" estimator. We develop novel moment-targeting estimates to account for confounding effects and establish that root-$N$ inference can be achieved as long as at least one nuisance model is correctly specified at each exposure time, despite the presence of high-dimensional covariates. Although the nuisance estimates themselves do not achieve root-$N$ rates, the carefully designed loss functions in our framework ensure final root-$N$ inference for the causal parameter of interest. Unlike off-the-shelf high-dimensional methods, which fail to deliver robust inference under model misspecification even within the doubly robust framework, our newly developed loss functions address this limitation effectively.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2111_06818
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamic treatment effects: high-dimensional inference under model misspecification
Zhang, Yuqian
Ji, Weijie
Bradic, Jelena
Methodology
Machine Learning
Econometrics
Statistics Theory
Estimating dynamic treatment effects is crucial across various disciplines, providing insights into the time-dependent causal impact of interventions. However, this estimation poses challenges due to time-varying confounding, leading to potentially biased estimates. Furthermore, accurately specifying the growing number of treatment assignments and outcome models with multiple exposures appears increasingly challenging to accomplish. Double robustness, which permits model misspecification, holds great value in addressing these challenges. This paper introduces a novel "sequential model doubly robust" estimator. We develop novel moment-targeting estimates to account for confounding effects and establish that root-$N$ inference can be achieved as long as at least one nuisance model is correctly specified at each exposure time, despite the presence of high-dimensional covariates. Although the nuisance estimates themselves do not achieve root-$N$ rates, the carefully designed loss functions in our framework ensure final root-$N$ inference for the causal parameter of interest. Unlike off-the-shelf high-dimensional methods, which fail to deliver robust inference under model misspecification even within the doubly robust framework, our newly developed loss functions address this limitation effectively.
title Dynamic treatment effects: high-dimensional inference under model misspecification
topic Methodology
Machine Learning
Econometrics
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06818