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arXiv 2003.12408stat.MLcs.LGstat.ME
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关于代理变量在有限结果数据下高效估计处理效应中的作用

On the role of surrogates in the efficient estimation of treatment effects with limited outcome data

Cornell Tech, Cornell University(康奈尔科技,康奈尔大学);School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University(清华大学经济管理学院)

Nathan Kallus, Xiaojie Mao

AI总结:

研究在有限目标结果数据下,如何利用代理结果数据提高平均处理效应估计精度,推导效率界限差异并开发稳健估计推断方法,实证验证了职业培训长期收入效应的估计提升。

摘要:

在许多实验和观察性研究中,感兴趣的结果通常难以观察或观察成本高昂,这降低了估计平均处理效应(ATEs)的有效样本量,即使其是可识别的。我们研究如何结合那些仅观察到非主要感兴趣代理结果的单元数据,以提高ATE估计的精度。我们避免施加严格的代理条件,这些条件允许代理变量作为目标结果的完美替代品。相反,我们在不假设无混淆处理分配、缺失性及对应重叠条件之外的前提下,用大量代理结果观察数据补充可用但有限的目标结果观察数据。为量化潜在收益,我们推导了有无代理变量时ATE估计的效率界限差异,包括在绝大多数或相当数量单元结果缺失的情况下。我们开发了实现这些效率提升的稳健ATE估计和推断方法。我们通过研究职业培训对长期收入的影响,实证展示了这些收益。

英文摘要:

In many experimental and observational studies, the outcome of interest is often difficult or expensive to observe, reducing effective sample sizes for estimating average treatment effects (ATEs) even when identifiable. We study how incorporating data on units for which only surrogate outcomes not of primary interest are observed can increase the precision of ATE estimation. We refrain from imposing stringent surrogacy conditions, which permit surrogates as perfect replacements for the target outcome. Instead, we supplement the available, albeit limited, observations of the target outcome with abundant observations of surrogate outcomes, without any assumptions beyond unconfounded treatment assignment and missingness and corresponding overlap conditions. To quantify the potential gains, we derive the difference in efficiency bounds on ATE estimation with and without surrogates, both when an overwhelming or comparable number of units have missing outcomes. We develop robust ATE estimation and inference methods that realize these efficiency gains. We empirically demonstrate the gains by studying long-term-earning effects of job training.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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