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Efficient Semiparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Under Covariate Adaptive Randomization

Ahnaf Rafi

arXiv 15 May 2023 · Econometrics · 4 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2305.08340 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Experiments that use covariate adaptive randomization (CAR) are commonplace in applied economics and other fields. In such experiments, the experimenter first stratifies the sample according to observed baseline covariates and then assigns treatment randomly within these strata so as to achieve balance according to pre-specified stratum-specific target assignment proportions. In this paper, we compute the semiparametric efficiency bound for estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) in such experiments with binary treatments allowing for the class of CAR procedures considered in Bugni, Canay, and Shaikh (2018, 2019). This is a broad class of procedures and is motivated by those used in practice. The stratum-specific target proportions play the role of the propensity score conditional on all baseline covariates (and not just the strata) in these experiments. Thus, the efficiency bound is a special case of the bound in Hahn (1998), but conditional on all baseline covariates. Additionally, this efficiency bound is shown to be achievable under the same conditions as those used to derive the bound by using a cross-fitted Nadaraya-Watson kernel estimator to form nonparametric regression adjustments.

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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
1Hahn, Jinyong (1998) On the Role of the Propensity Score in Efficient Semiparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects1.000205100%
2Bugni, Federico A., Canay, Ivan A., Shaikh, Azeem M (2019) Inference under Covariate-Adaptive Randomization with Multiple Treatments1.000134100%
3Bugni, Federico A., Canay, Ivan A., Shaikh, Azeem M (2018) Inference Under Covariate-Adaptive Randomization1.000124100%
4LeCam, Lucien (1960) Locally Asymptotically Normal Families of Distributions: Certain Approximations to Families of Distributions and Their Use in th…0.9285380%
5Chernozhukov, Victor, Chetverikov, Denis, Demirer, Mert, Duflo, Esth… (2018) Double/debiased machine learning for treatment and structural parameters0.81142100%
6Devroye, Luc P., Wagner, T. J (1980) Distribution-Free Consistency Results in Nonparametric Discrimination and Regression Function Estimation0.73732100%
7Spiegelman, C., Sacks, J (1980) Consistent Window Estimation in Nonparametric Regression0.73732100%
8Armstrong, Timothy B (2022) Asymptotic Efficiency Bounds for a Class of Experimental Designs0.69351100%
9Hájek, Jaroslav (1970) A characterization of limiting distributions of regular estimates0.6443267%
10Hájek, Jaroslav (1972) Local asymptotic minimax and admissibility in estimation0.6443267%

Showing the top 10 of 66 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
1On the Efficiency of Highly Stratified Experiments1.00053
2Integrating Heterogeneous Information in Randomized Experiments: A Unified Calibration Framework0.969116
3On Efficient Estimation of Distributional Treatment Effects under Covariate-Adaptive Randomization0.64422
4A Primer on the Analysis of Randomized Experiments and a Survey of some Recent Advances0.58531
5On the Asymptotic Properties of Debiased Machine Learning Estimators0.51121
6Beyond the Average: Distributional Causal Inference under Imperfect Compliance0.40511
7Assumption-lean covariate adjustment under covariate adaptive randomization when $p = o (n)$0.40511