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Meta-Learners for Estimation of Causal Effects: Finite Sample Cross-Fit Performance

Gabriel Okasa

arXiv 30 Jan 2022 · Econometrics · 2 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2201.12692 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Estimation of causal effects using machine learning methods has become an active research field in econometrics. In this paper, we study the finite sample performance of meta-learners for estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects under the usage of sample-splitting and cross-fitting to reduce the overfitting bias. In both synthetic and semi-synthetic simulations we find that the performance of the meta-learners in finite samples greatly depends on the estimation procedure. The results imply that sample-splitting and cross-fitting are beneficial in large samples for bias reduction and efficiency of the meta-learners, respectively, whereas full-sample estimation is preferable in small samples. Furthermore, we derive practical recommendations for application of specific meta-learners in empirical studies depending on particular data characteristics such as treatment shares and sample size.

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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
1Sekhon, Jasjeet S., Bickel, Peter J., Yu, Bin (2019) Metalearners for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects using machine learning1.000376100%
2Knaus, Michael C, Lechner, Michael, Strittmatter, Anthony (2021) Machine learning estimation of heterogeneous causal effects: Empirical Monte Carlo evidence1.000185100%
3Nie, X, Wager, S (2021) Quasi-oracle estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects1.000184100%
4Kennedy, Edward H (2020) Optimal doubly robust estimation of heterogeneous causal effects1.000164100%
5Chernozhukov, Victor, Chetverikov, Denis, Demirer, Mert, Duflo, Esth… (2018) Double/debiased machine learning for treatment and structural parameters1.000143100%
6Lechner, Michael (2018) Modified Causal Forests for Estimating Heterogeneous Causal Effects1.000115100%
7Newey, Whitney K., Robins, James R (2018) Cross-fitting and fast remainder rates for semiparametric estimation1.000114100%
8Jacob, Daniel (2020) Cross-Fitting and Averaging for Machine Learning Estimation of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects1.000104100%
9Wager, Stefan, Athey, Susan (2018) Estimation and Inference of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects using Random Forests1.00083100%
10Athey, Susan, Tibshirani, Julie, Wager, Stefan (2019) Generalized random forests1.00076100%

Showing the top 10 of 120 scored citations.