EconBase
← All papers

Kernel Instrumental Variable Regression

Rahul Singh, Maneesh Sahani, Arthur Gretton

arXiv 1 Jun 2019 · Machine Learning · 6 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1906.00232 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Instrumental variable (IV) regression is a strategy for learning causal relationships in observational data. If measurements of input X and output Y are confounded, the causal relationship can nonetheless be identified if an instrumental variable Z is available that influences X directly, but is conditionally independent of Y given X and the unmeasured confounder. The classic two-stage least squares algorithm (2SLS) simplifies the estimation problem by modeling all relationships as linear functions. We propose kernel instrumental variable regression (KIV), a nonparametric generalization of 2SLS, modeling relations among X, Y, and Z as nonlinear functions in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs). We prove the consistency of KIV under mild assumptions, and derive conditions under which convergence occurs at the minimax optimal rate for unconfounded, single-stage RKHS regression. In doing so, we obtain an efficient ratio between training sample sizes used in the algorithm's first and second stages. In experiments, KIV outperforms state of the art alternatives for nonparametric IV regression.

Citation extraction

68
references
290
in-text mentions
68
distinct cited
9
self-citations
8,970
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 41% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

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
1Marine Carrasco, Jean-Pierre Florens, and Eric Renault (2007) Linear inverse problems in structural econometrics estimation based on spectral decomposition and regularization1.00054100%
2Whitney K Newey and James L Powell (2003) Instrumental variable estimation of nonparametric models0.92810680%
3Xiaohong Chen and Timothy M Christensen (2018) Optimal sup-norm rates and uniform inference on nonlinear functionals of nonparametric IV regression0.92810480%
4Jason Hartford, Greg Lewis, Kevin Leyton-Brown, and Matt Taddy (2017) Deep IV: A flexible approach for counterfactual prediction0.89414471%
5Zoltán Szabó, Arthur Gretton, Barnabás Póczos, and Bharath Sriperumb… (2015) Two-stage sampled learning theory on distributions self0.8749467%
6Steffen Grünewälder, Guy Lever, Luca Baldassarre, Massimilano Pontil… (2012) Modelling transition dynamics in MDPs with RKHS embeddings self0.8434375%
7Bharath Sriperumbudur, Kenji Fukumizu, and Gert Lanckriet (2010) On the relation between universality, characteristic kernels and RKHS embedding of measures0.84333100%
8Zoltán Szabó, Bharath Sriperumbudur, Barnabás Póczos, and Arthur Gre… (2016) Learning theory for distribution regression self0.79420450%
9Serge Darolles, Yanqin Fan, Jean-Pierre Florens, and Eric Renault (2011) Nonparametric instrumental regression0.78121548%
10Le Song, Jonathan Huang, Alex Smola, and Kenji Fukumizu (2009) Hilbert space embeddings of conditional distributions with applications to dynamical systems0.7639344%

Showing the top 10 of 68 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
1Dual Instrumental Variable Regression1.000155
2Fast and Adaptive Rates for Regularized DeepIV0.87464
3Penalized GMM Framework for Inference on Functionals of Nonparametric Instrumental Variable Estimators0.84333
4Learning Causal Models from Conditional Moment Restrictions by Importance Weighting0.73733
5Minimax Estimation of Conditional Moment Models0.69362
6Generalized Kernel Ridge Regression for Causal Inference with Missing-at-Random Sample Selection0.69364
7Kernel Methods for Causal Functions: Dose, Heterogeneous, and Incremental Response Curves0.659145
8Conformal Prediction for Nonparametric Instrumental Regression0.64432
9Causal Gradient Boosting: Boosted Instrumental Variable Regression0.64422
10A Simple and General Debiased Machine Learning Theorem with Finite Sample Guarantees0.64422