A unified framework for efficient estimation of general treatment models

DOI10.3982/QE1494zbMATH Open1477.62072arXiv1808.04936OpenAlexW2885933200MaRDI QIDQ5164501FDOQ5164501

Authors: Chunrong Ai, Oliver Linton, Kaiji Motegi, Zheng Zhang 

Publication date: 11 November 2021

Published in: Quantitative Economics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: This paper presents a weighted optimization framework that unifies the binary,multi-valued, continuous, as well as mixture of discrete and continuous treatment, under the unconfounded treatment assignment. With a general loss function, the framework includes the average, quantile and asymmetric least squares causal effect of treatment as special cases. For this general framework, we first derive the semiparametric efficiency bound for the causal effect of treatment, extending the existing bound results to a wider class of models. We then propose a generalized optimization estimation for the causal effect with weights estimated by solving an expanding set of equations. Under some sufficient conditions, we establish consistency and asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator of the causal effect and show that the estimator attains our semiparametric efficiency bound, thereby extending the existing literature on efficient estimation of causal effect to a wider class of applications. Finally, we discuss etimation of some causal effect functionals such as the treatment effect curve and the average outcome. To evaluate the finite sample performance of the proposed procedure, we conduct a small scale simulation study and find that the proposed estimation has practical value. To illustrate the applicability of the procedure, we revisit the literature on campaign advertise and campaign contributions. Unlike the existing procedures which produce mixed results, we find no evidence of campaign advertise on campaign contribution.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.04936

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zbMATH Keywords

causal effectsemiparametric efficiencytreatment effectsieve methodentropy maximizationstabilized weights

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Statistical aspects of information-theoretic topics (62B10) Nonparametric estimation (62G05) Measures of information, entropy (94A17)

Cited In (13)

• General balance, large data sets and extensions to unbalanced treatment structures
• Causal effect estimation for multivariate continuous treatments
• Independence Weights for Causal Inference with Continuous Treatments
• Estimating Density Ratio of Marginals to Joint: Applications to Causal Inference
• Nonparametric estimation of mediation effects with a general treatment
• A Unified Framework for Specification Tests of Continuous Treatment Effect Models
• A Simple and Efficient Estimation of Average Treatment Effects in Models with Unmeasured Confounders
• Causal inference of general treatment effects using neural networks with a diverging number of confounders
• Continuous treatment effect estimation via generative adversarial de-confounding
• A Generalized Estimator of the Attributable Benefit of an Optimal Treatment Regime
• Optimal Covariate Balancing Conditions in Propensity Score Estimation
• Covariates distributions balancing for continuous treatment
• Entropy balancing for continuous treatments

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