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Revealing Unobservables by Deep Learning: Generative Element Extraction Networks (GEEN)

Yingyao Hu, Yang Liu, Jiaxiong Yao

arXiv 4 Oct 2022 · Statistics — Machine Learning · 2 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2210.01300 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Latent variable models are crucial in scientific research, where a key variable, such as effort, ability, and belief, is unobserved in the sample but needs to be identified. This paper proposes a novel method for estimating realizations of a latent variable $X^*$ in a random sample that contains its multiple measurements. With the key assumption that the measurements are independent conditional on $X^*$, we provide sufficient conditions under which realizations of $X^*$ in the sample are locally unique in a class of deviations, which allows us to identify realizations of $X^*$. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to provide such identification in observation. We then use the Kullback-Leibler distance between the two probability densities with and without the conditional independence as the loss function to train a Generative Element Extraction Networks (GEEN) that maps from the observed measurements to realizations of $X^*$ in the sample. The simulation results imply that this proposed estimator works quite well and the estimated values are highly correlated with realizations of $X^*$. Our estimator can be applied to a large class of latent variable models and we expect it will change how people deal with latent variables.

Citation extraction

27
references
32
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
1Hu, Y.; and Schennach, S. M (2008) Instrumental variable treatment of nonclassical measurement error models self0.81142100%
2Kingma, D. P.; and Welling, M (2013) Auto-encoding variational bayes0.51121100%
3Yoon, J.; Jordon, J.; and Schaar, M (2018) Gain: Missing data imputation using generative adversarial nets0.51121100%
4Aigner, D. J.; Hsiao, C.; Kapteyn, A.; and Wansbeek, T (1984) Latent variable models in econometrics0.40511100%
5Belghazi, M. I.; Baratin, A.; Rajeshwar, S.; Ozair, S.; Bengio, Y.;… (2018) Mutual information neural estimation0.40511100%
6Bishop, C. M (1998) Latent variable models0.40511100%
7Darbellay, G. A.; and Vajda, I (1999) Estimation of the information by an adaptive partitioning of the observation space0.40511100%
8Goodfellow, I.; Pouget-Abadie, J.; Mirza, M.; Xu, B.; Warde-Farley,… (2014) Generative adversarial nets0.40511100%
9Holston, K.; Laubach, T.; and Williams, J. C (2017) Measuring the natural rate of interest: International trends and determinants0.40511100%
10Hu, Y (2017) The econometrics of unobservables: Applications of measurement error models in empirical industrial organization and labor econo… self0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 27 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
1Identification of Unobservables in Observations0.40511