Transfer Learning for Causal Effect Estimation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wei, Song, Zhang, Hanyu, Moore, Ronald, Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan, Xie, Yao
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Wei, Song
Zhang, Hanyu
Moore, Ronald
Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan
Xie, Yao
author_facet Wei, Song
Zhang, Hanyu
Moore, Ronald
Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan
Xie, Yao
contents We present a Transfer Causal Learning (TCL) framework when target and source domains share the same covariate/feature spaces, aiming to improve causal effect estimation accuracy in limited data. Limited data is very common in medical applications, where some rare medical conditions, such as sepsis, are of interest. Our proposed method, named \texttt{$\ell_1$-TCL}, incorporates $\ell_1$ regularized TL for nuisance models (e.g., propensity score model); the TL estimator of the nuisance parameters is plugged into downstream average causal/treatment effect estimators (e.g., inverse probability weighted estimator). We establish non-asymptotic recovery guarantees for the \texttt{$\ell_1$-TCL} with generalized linear model (GLM) under the sparsity assumption in the high-dimensional setting, and demonstrate the empirical benefits of \texttt{$\ell_1$-TCL} through extensive numerical simulation for GLM and recent neural network nuisance models. Our method is subsequently extended to real data and generates meaningful insights consistent with medical literature, a case where all baseline methods fail.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_09126
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Transfer Learning for Causal Effect Estimation
Wei, Song
Zhang, Hanyu
Moore, Ronald
Kamaleswaran, Rishikesan
Xie, Yao
Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
Methodology
We present a Transfer Causal Learning (TCL) framework when target and source domains share the same covariate/feature spaces, aiming to improve causal effect estimation accuracy in limited data. Limited data is very common in medical applications, where some rare medical conditions, such as sepsis, are of interest. Our proposed method, named \texttt{$\ell_1$-TCL}, incorporates $\ell_1$ regularized TL for nuisance models (e.g., propensity score model); the TL estimator of the nuisance parameters is plugged into downstream average causal/treatment effect estimators (e.g., inverse probability weighted estimator). We establish non-asymptotic recovery guarantees for the \texttt{$\ell_1$-TCL} with generalized linear model (GLM) under the sparsity assumption in the high-dimensional setting, and demonstrate the empirical benefits of \texttt{$\ell_1$-TCL} through extensive numerical simulation for GLM and recent neural network nuisance models. Our method is subsequently extended to real data and generates meaningful insights consistent with medical literature, a case where all baseline methods fail.
title Transfer Learning for Causal Effect Estimation
topic Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09126