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Residual Balancing for Non-Linear Outcome Models in High Dimensions

Isaac Meza

arXiv 31 Oct 2025 · Econometrics

arXiv:2511.00324 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We extend the approximate residual balancing (ARB) framework to nonlinear models, answering an open problem posed by Athey et al. (2018). Our approach addresses the challenge of estimating average treatment effects in high-dimensional settings where the outcome follows a generalized linear model. We derive a new bias decomposition for nonlinear models that reveals the need for a second-order correction to account for the curvature of the link function. Based on this insight, we construct balancing weights through an optimization problem that controls for both first and second-order sources of bias. We provide theoretical guarantees for our estimator, establishing its $\sqrt{n}$-consistency and asymptotic normality under standard high-dimensional assumptions.

Citation extraction

29
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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, Susan, Imbens, Guido, & Wager, Stefan (2018) Approximate residual balancing: debiased inference of average treatment effects in high dimensions0.92843100%
2Javanmard, Adel, & Montanari, Andrea (2014) Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis Testing for High-Dimensional Regression0.64422100%
3Robins, James, Li, Lingling, Tchetgen, Eric, & van der Vaart, Aad (2008) Higher order influence functions and minimax estimation of nonlinear functionals0.64422100%
4Hirshberg, David A., & Wager, Stefan (2018) Debiased Inference of Average Partial Effects in Single-Index Models0.64422100%
5Javanmard, Adel, & Montanari, Andrea (2018) Debiasing the lasso: Optimal sample size for Gaussian designs0.64422100%
6Mackey, Lester, Syrgkanis, Vasilis, & Zadik, Ilias (2018) Orthogonal Machine Learning: Power and Limitations0.64422100%
7Negahban, Sahand N., Ravikumar, Pradeep, Wainwright, Martin J., & Yu… (2012) A Unified Framework for High-Dimensional Analysis of $M$-Estimators with Decomposable Regularizers0.64422100%
8Van de Geer, Sara A (2008) High-dimensional generalized linear models and the lasso0.64422100%
9Bühlmann, Peter, & Van De Geer, Sara (2011) Statistics for high-dimensional data: Methods, theory and applications0.51121100%
10Tsybakov, Alexandre B (2009) Introduction to Nonparametric Estimation0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 29 scored citations.