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Nonparametric estimation of conditional densities by generalized random forests

Federico Zincenko

arXiv 23 Sep 2023 · Econometrics · publishedEconometric Reviews (2025)

arXiv:2309.13251 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Considering a continuous random variable Y together with a continuous random vector X, I propose a nonparametric estimator f^(.|x) for the conditional density of Y given X=x. This estimator takes the form of an exponential series whose coefficients Tx = (Tx1,...,TxJ) are the solution of a system of nonlinear equations that depends on an estimator of the conditional expectation E[p(Y)|X=x], where p is a J-dimensional vector of basis functions. The distinguishing feature of the proposed estimator is that E[p(Y)|X=x] is estimated by generalized random forest (Athey, Tibshirani, and Wager, Annals of Statistics, 2019), targeting the heterogeneity of Tx across x. I show that f^(.|x) is uniformly consistent and asymptotically normal, allowing J to grow to infinity. I also provide a standard error formula to construct asymptotically valid confidence intervals. Results from Monte Carlo experiments are provided.

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39
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88
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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
1Athey, S., J. Tibshirani, and S. Wager (2019) Generalized random forests1.000164100%
2Wu, X (2010) Exponential series estimator of multivariate densities0.9416583%
3Wager, S. and S. Athey (2018) Estimation and inference of heterogeneous treatment effects using random forests0.88513469%
4Barron, A. R. and C. Sheu (1991) Approximation of density functions by sequences of exponential families0.76911445%
5Vitale, R. A (1992) Covariances of symmetric statistics0.7374350%
6Shao, J. and C. F. J. Wu (1989) A general theory for jackknife variance estimation0.5112250%
7van der Vaart, A. W (1998) Asymptotic Statistics0.5112250%
8Breiman, L (2001) Random forests0.51121100%
9Athey, S. and P. A. Haile (2007) Nonparametric approaches to auctions0.40511100%
10Asher, S., D. Nekipelov, P. Novosad, and S. P. Ryan (2016) Classification trees for heterogeneous moment-based models0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 39 scored citations.