Estimating Distributional Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments: Machine Learning for Variance Reduction

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Byambadalai, Undral, Oka, Tatsushi, Yasui, Shota
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Byambadalai, Undral
Oka, Tatsushi
Yasui, Shota
author_facet Byambadalai, Undral
Oka, Tatsushi
Yasui, Shota
contents We propose a novel regression adjustment method designed for estimating distributional treatment effect parameters in randomized experiments. Randomized experiments have been extensively used to estimate treatment effects in various scientific fields. However, to gain deeper insights, it is essential to estimate distributional treatment effects rather than relying solely on average effects. Our approach incorporates pre-treatment covariates into a distributional regression framework, utilizing machine learning techniques to improve the precision of distributional treatment effect estimators. The proposed approach can be readily implemented with off-the-shelf machine learning methods and remains valid as long as the nuisance components are reasonably well estimated. Also, we establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator and present a uniformly valid inference method. Through simulation results and real data analysis, we demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating machine learning techniques in reducing the variance of distributional treatment effect estimators in finite samples.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_16037
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimating Distributional Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments: Machine Learning for Variance Reduction
Byambadalai, Undral
Oka, Tatsushi
Yasui, Shota
Econometrics
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
We propose a novel regression adjustment method designed for estimating distributional treatment effect parameters in randomized experiments. Randomized experiments have been extensively used to estimate treatment effects in various scientific fields. However, to gain deeper insights, it is essential to estimate distributional treatment effects rather than relying solely on average effects. Our approach incorporates pre-treatment covariates into a distributional regression framework, utilizing machine learning techniques to improve the precision of distributional treatment effect estimators. The proposed approach can be readily implemented with off-the-shelf machine learning methods and remains valid as long as the nuisance components are reasonably well estimated. Also, we establish the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator and present a uniformly valid inference method. Through simulation results and real data analysis, we demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating machine learning techniques in reducing the variance of distributional treatment effect estimators in finite samples.
title Estimating Distributional Treatment Effects in Randomized Experiments: Machine Learning for Variance Reduction
topic Econometrics
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.16037