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Machine Learning Methods Economists Should Know About

Susan Athey, Guido Imbens

arXiv 24 Mar 2019 · Econometrics · publishedAnnual Review of Economics (2019) · 1,060 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1903.10075 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We discuss the relevance of the recent Machine Learning (ML) literature for economics and econometrics. First we discuss the differences in goals, methods and settings between the ML literature and the traditional econometrics and statistics literatures. Then we discuss some specific methods from the machine learning literature that we view as important for empirical researchers in economics. These include supervised learning methods for regression and classification, unsupervised learning methods, as well as matrix completion methods. Finally, we highlight newly developed methods at the intersection of ML and econometrics, methods that typically perform better than either off-the-shelf ML or more traditional econometric methods when applied to particular classes of problems, problems that include causal inference for average treatment effects, optimal policy estimation, and estimation of the counterfactual effect of price changes in consumer choice models.

Citation extraction

144
references
216
in-text mentions
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distinct cited
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main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Stefan Wager and Susan Athey (2017) Estimation and inference of heterogeneous treatment effects using random forests self1.00074100%
2Susan Athey and Guido Imbens (2016) Recursive partitioning for heterogeneous causal effects self1.00053100%
3Susan Athey, Julie Tibshirani, and Stefan Wager Generalized random forests self0.92843100%
4Max H Farrell, Tengyuan Liang, and Sanjog Misra (2018) Deep neural networks for estimation and inference: Application to causal effects and other semiparametric estimands0.92843100%
5Rina Friedberg, Julie Tibshirani, Susan Athey, and Stefan Wager (2018) Local linear forests self0.81142100%
6Sendhil Mullainathan and Jann Spiess (2017) Machine learning: an applied econometric approach0.81142100%
7Francisco JR Ruiz, Susan Athey, and David M Blei (2017) Shopper: A probabilistic model of consumer choice with substitutes and complements self0.81142100%
8Alexandre Belloni, Victor Chernozhukov, and Christian Hansen (2014) High-dimensional methods and inference on structural and treatment effects0.73732100%
9Dimitris Bertsimas, Angela King, Rahul Mazumder, et al (2016) Best subset selection via a modern optimization lens0.73732100%
10Léon Bottou (2012) Stochastic gradient descent tricks0.73732100%

Showing the top 10 of 144 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Meta-Learners for Estimation of Causal Effects: Finite Sample Cross-Fit Performance1.00053
2Optimizing Patient Placement in Normal Care Units: An Instrumental Causal Forest Approach Minimizing Mortality0.92843
3Optimal Targeting in Fundraising: A Causal Machine-Learning Approach0.84333
4Optimal Bias-Correction and Valid Inference in High-Dimensional Ridge Regression: A Closed-Form Solution0.81142
5Sample Fit Reliability0.64422
6Calibrating doubly-robust estimators with unbalanced treatment assignment0.64422
7AI-Assisted Economic Measurement from Survey Instruments: Evidence from Public-Employee Pension Choice0.64422
8On regression-adjusted imputation estimators of the average treatment effect0.51121
9HMM-LSTM Fusion Model for Economic Forecasting0.51121
10What Is the Value Added by Using Causal Machine Learning Methods in a Welfare Experiment Evaluation?0.40511