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A Causal Perspective on Loan Pricing: Investigating the Impacts of Selection Bias on Identifying Bid-Response Functions

Christopher Bockel-Rickermann, Sam Verboven, Tim Verdonck, Wouter Verbeke

arXiv 7 Sep 2023 · Machine Learning

arXiv:2309.03730 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

In lending, where prices are specific to both customers and products, having a well-functioning personalized pricing policy in place is essential to effective business making. Typically, such a policy must be derived from observational data, which introduces several challenges. While the problem of “endogeneity” is prominently studied in the established pricing literature, the problem of selection bias (or, more precisely, bid selection bias) is not. We take a step towards understanding the effects of selection bias by posing pricing as a problem of causal inference. Specifically, we consider the reaction of a customer to price a treatment effect. In our experiments, we simulate varying levels of selection bias on a semi-synthetic dataset on mortgage loan applications in Belgium. We investigate the potential of parametric and nonparametric methods for the identification of individual bid-response functions. Our results illustrate how conventional methods such as logistic regression and neural networks suffer adversely from selection bias. In contrast, we implement state-of-the-art methods from causal machine learning and show their capability to overcome selection bias in pricing data.

Citation extraction

65
references
101
in-text mentions
65
distinct cited
3
self-citations
9,250
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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
1Bica, I., Jordon, J., van der Schaar, M (2020) Estimating the effects of continuous-valued interventions using generative adversarial networks1.00073100%
2Schwab, P., Linhardt, L., Bauer, S., Buhmann, J.M., Karlen, W (2020) Learning counterfactual representations for estimating individual dose-response curves1.00073100%
3Nie, L., Ye, M., Liu, Q., Nicolae, D (2021) Vcnet and functional targeted regularization for learning causal effects of continuous treatments1.00053100%
4Vanderschueren, T., Boute, R., Verdonck, T., Baesens, B., Verbeke, W (2023) Optimizing the preventive maintenance frequency with causal machine learning self1.00053100%
5Phillips, R (2021) Pricing and revenue optimization0.92843100%
6van Ryzin, G.J (2012) Models of Demand0.84333100%
7Angrist, J.D., Pischke, J.S (2009) Mostly harmless econometrics: An empiricist's companion0.64422100%
8Berrevoets, J., Jordon, J., Bica, I., van der Schaar, M., et al (2020) Organite: Optimal transplant donor organ offering using an individual treatment effect0.64422100%
9Phillips, R., Simsek, A.S., Van Ryzin, G (2012) Endogeneity and price sensitivity in customized pricing0.64422100%
10Phillips, R (2013) Optimizing prices for consumer credit0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 65 scored citations.