Optimal Policy Adaptation under Covariate Shift

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Liu, Xueqing, Yang, Qinwei, Tian, Zhaoqing, Guo, Ruocheng, Wu, Peng
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Liu, Xueqing
Yang, Qinwei
Tian, Zhaoqing
Guo, Ruocheng
Wu, Peng
author_facet Liu, Xueqing
Yang, Qinwei
Tian, Zhaoqing
Guo, Ruocheng
Wu, Peng
contents Transfer learning of prediction models has been extensively studied, while the corresponding policy learning approaches are rarely discussed. In this paper, we propose principled approaches for learning the optimal policy in the target domain by leveraging two datasets: one with full information from the source domain and the other from the target domain with only covariates. First, under the setting of covariate shift, we formulate the problem from a perspective of causality and present the identifiability assumptions for the reward induced by a given policy. Then, we derive the efficient influence function and the semiparametric efficiency bound for the reward. Based on this, we construct a doubly robust and semiparametric efficient estimator for the reward and then learn the optimal policy by optimizing the estimated reward. Moreover, we theoretically analyze the bias and the generalization error bound for the learned policy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the approach not only estimates the reward more accurately but also yields a policy that closely approximates the theoretically optimal policy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_08067
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal Policy Adaptation under Covariate Shift
Liu, Xueqing
Yang, Qinwei
Tian, Zhaoqing
Guo, Ruocheng
Wu, Peng
Machine Learning
Transfer learning of prediction models has been extensively studied, while the corresponding policy learning approaches are rarely discussed. In this paper, we propose principled approaches for learning the optimal policy in the target domain by leveraging two datasets: one with full information from the source domain and the other from the target domain with only covariates. First, under the setting of covariate shift, we formulate the problem from a perspective of causality and present the identifiability assumptions for the reward induced by a given policy. Then, we derive the efficient influence function and the semiparametric efficiency bound for the reward. Based on this, we construct a doubly robust and semiparametric efficient estimator for the reward and then learn the optimal policy by optimizing the estimated reward. Moreover, we theoretically analyze the bias and the generalization error bound for the learned policy. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the approach not only estimates the reward more accurately but also yields a policy that closely approximates the theoretically optimal policy.
title Optimal Policy Adaptation under Covariate Shift
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08067