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超越可实现性假设的可计算上下文老虎机算法AI 解读

Tractable contextual bandit algorithms often rely on the realizability assumption - i.e., that the true expected reward model belongs to a known class, such as linear functions. In this work, we present a tractable bandit algorithm that is not sensitive to the realizability assumption and computationally reduces to solving a constrained regression problem in every epoch. When realizability does not hold, our algorithm ensures the same guarantees on regret achieved by…

存在变点时的自协方差估计AI 解读

This article studies estimation of a stationary autocovariance structure in the presence of an unknown number of mean shifts. Here, a Yule-Walker moment estimator for the autoregressive parameters in a dependent time series contaminated by mean shift changepoints is proposed and studied. The estimator is based on first order differences of the series and is proven consistent and asymptotically normal when the number of changepoints $m$ and the series length $N$ satisfies $m/N \rightarrow 0$…

基于主成分分析的再随机化AI 解读

Mahalanobis distance between treatment group and control group covariate means is often adopted as a balance criterion when implementing a rerandomization strategy. However, this criterion may not work well for high-dimensional cases because it balances all orthogonalized covariates equally. Here, we propose leveraging principal component analysis (PCA) to identify proper subspaces in which Mahalanobis distance should be calculated. Not only can PCA effectively reduce the…

不完全模型中的统计推断AI 解读

We provide a test for the specification of a structural model without identifying assumptions. We show the equivalence of several natural formulations of correct specification, which we take as our null hypothesis. From a natural empirical version of the latter, we derive a Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic for Choquet capacity functionals, which we use to construct our test. We derive the limiting distribution of our test statistic under the null, and show that our test is…

半参数反事实密度估计AI 解读

Causal effects are often characterized with averages, which can give an incomplete picture of the underlying counterfactual distributions. Here we consider estimating the entire counterfactual density and generic functionals thereof. We focus on two kinds of target parameters. The first is a density approximation, defined by a projection onto a finite-dimensional model using a generalized distance metric, which includes f-divergences as well as $L_p$ norms. The second is the…

可推广性与可迁移性综述AI 解读

When assessing causal effects, determining the target population to which the results are intended to generalize is a critical decision. Randomized and observational studies each have strengths and limitations for estimating causal effects in a target population. Estimates from randomized data may have internal validity but are often not representative of the target population. Observational data may better reflect the target population, and hence be more likely to have…

lpdensity：局部多项式密度估计与推断AI 解读

Density estimation and inference methods are widely used in empirical work. When the underlying distribution has compact support, conventional kernel-based density estimators are no longer consistent near or at the boundary because of their well-known boundary bias. Alternative smoothing methods are available to handle boundary points in density estimation, but they all require additional tuning parameter choices or other typically ad hoc modifications depending on the…

观察性研究中所选子群的锐利推断AI 解读

In modern drug development, the broader availability of high-dimensional observational data provides opportunities for scientist to explore subgroup heterogeneity, especially when randomized clinical trials are unavailable due to cost and ethical constraints. However, a common practice that naively searches the subgroup with a high treatment level is often misleading due to the "subgroup selection bias." More importantly, the nature of high-dimensional observational data has…

条件预测中用已观测协变量填补缺失协变量的收缩问题AI 解读

Researchers regularly perform conditional prediction using imputed values of missing data. However, applications of imputation often lack a firm foundation in statistical theory. This paper originated when we were unable to find analysis substantiating claims that imputation of missing data has good frequentist properties when data are missing at random (MAR). We focused on the use of observed covariates to impute missing covariates when estimating conditional means of the…

病例对照研究中的回忆偏差：因果推断方法AI 解读

A case-control study is designed to help determine if an exposure is associated with an outcome. However, since case-control studies are retrospective, they are often subject to recall bias. Recall bias can occur when study subjects do not remember previous events accurately. In this paper, we first define the estimand of interest: the causal odds ratio (COR) for a case-control study. Second, we develop estimation approaches for the COR and present estimates as a function of…

通过随机优化进行估计与推断：三个实例AI 解读

This paper illustrates two algorithms designed in Forneron & Ng (2020): the resampled Newton-Raphson (rNR) and resampled quasi-Newton (rqN) algorithms which speed-up estimation and bootstrap inference for structural models. An empirical application to BLP shows that computation time decreases from nearly 5 hours with the standard bootstrap to just over 1 hour with rNR, and only 15 minutes using rqN. A first Monte-Carlo exercise illustrates the accuracy of the method for…

利用观察性研究信息设计实验AI 解读

The increasing availability of passively observed data has yielded a growing methodological interest in "data fusion." These methods involve merging data from observational and experimental sources to draw causal conclusions -- and they typically require a precarious tradeoff between the unknown bias in the observational dataset and the often-large variance in the experimental dataset. We propose an alternative approach to leveraging observational data, which avoids this…

疫情监测：COVID-19 接触率的分数阶滤波AI 解读

This paper aims to provide reliable estimates for the COVID-19 contact rate of a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model. From observable data on confirmed, recovered, and deceased cases, a noisy measurement for the contact rate can be constructed. To filter out measurement errors and seasonality, a novel unobserved components (UC) model is set up. It specifies the log contact rate as a latent, fractionally integrated process of unknown integration order. The fractional…

空间相关稳健推断AI 解读

We propose a method for constructing confidence intervals that account for many forms of spatial correlation. The interval has the familiar `estimator plus and minus a standard error times a critical value' form, but we propose new methods for constructing the standard error and the critical value. The standard error is constructed using population principal components from a given `worst-case' spatial covariance model. The critical value is chosen to ensure coverage in a…

深度结构估计及其期权定价应用AI 解读

We propose a novel structural estimation framework in which we train a surrogate of an economic model with deep neural networks. Our methodology alleviates the curse of dimensionality and speeds up the evaluation and parameter estimation by orders of magnitudes, which significantly enhances one's ability to conduct analyses that require frequent parameter re-estimation. As an empirical application, we compare two popular option pricing models (the Heston and the Bates model…

新奇效应与先入效应：在线实验的长期效应估计AI 解读

Online experiments are the gold standard for evaluating impact on user experience and accelerating innovation in software. However, since experiments are typically limited in duration, observed treatment effects are not always permanently stable, sometimes revealing increasing or decreasing patterns over time. There are multiple causes for a treatment effect to change over time. In this paper, we focus on a particular cause, user-learning, which is primarily associated with…

大数据与因果调查研究：混合模式在线面板招募中的无应答AI 解读

Survey scientists increasingly face the problem of high-dimensionality in their research as digitization makes it much easier to construct high-dimensional (or "big") data sets through tools such as online surveys and mobile applications. Machine learning methods are able to handle such data, and they have been successfully applied to solve \emph{predictive} problems. However, in many situations, survey statisticians want to learn about \emph{causal} relationships to draw…

函数型混杂变量下的因果估计AI 解读

Causal inference relies on two fundamental assumptions: ignorability and positivity. We study causal inference when the true confounder value can be expressed as a function of the observed data; we call this setting estimation with functional confounders (EFC). In this setting, ignorability is satisfied, however positivity is violated, and causal inference is impossible in general. We consider two scenarios where causal effects are estimable. First, we discuss interventions…

动态离散选择模型中的对偶性AI 解读

Using results from convex analysis, we investigate a novel approach to identification and estimation of discrete choice models which we call the Mass Transport Approach (MTA). We show that the conditional choice probabilities and the choice-specific payoffs in these models are related in the sense of conjugate duality, and that the identification problem is a mass transport problem. Based on this, we propose a new two-step estimator for these models; interestingly, the first…

从有向无环图构造广义线性因果模型的有效工具变量AI 解读

Unlike other techniques of causality inference, the use of valid instrumental variables can deal with unobserved sources of both variable errors, variable omissions, and sampling bias, and still arrive at consistent estimates of average treatment effects. The only problem is to find the valid instruments. Using the definition of Pearl (2009) of valid instrumental variables, a formal condition for validity can be stated for variables in generalized linear causal models. The…

全局跳跃过滤与已实现波动率AI 解读

For a semimartingale with jumps, we propose a new estimation method for integrated volatility, i.e., the quadratic variation of the continuous martingale part, based on the global jump filter proposed by Inatsugu and Yoshida [8]. To decide whether each increment of the process has jumps, the global jump filter adopts the upper $α$-quantile of the absolute increments as the threshold. This jump filter is called global since it uses all the observations to classify one…

点估计与区间估计的形状约束算子AI 解读

A common problem in econometrics, statistics, and machine learning is to estimate and make inference on functions that satisfy shape restrictions. For example, distribution functions are nondecreasing and range between zero and one, height growth charts are nondecreasing in age, and production functions are nondecreasing and quasi-concave in input quantities. We propose a method to enforce these restrictions ex post on point and interval estimates of the target function by…

自适应实验中政策评估的置信区间AI 解读

Adaptive experiment designs can dramatically improve statistical efficiency in randomized trials, but they also complicate statistical inference. For example, it is now well known that the sample mean is biased in adaptive trials. Inferential challenges are exacerbated when our parameter of interest differs from the parameter the trial was designed to target, such as when we are interested in estimating the value of a sub-optimal treatment after running a trial to determine…

形状约束下非参数推断的线性规划方法：回归折点设计应用AI 解读

We develop a novel method of constructing confidence bands for nonparametric regression functions under shape constraints. This method can be implemented via a linear programming, and it is thus computationally appealing. We illustrate a usage of our proposed method with an application to the regression kink design (RKD). Econometric analyses based on the RKD often suffer from wide confidence intervals due to slow convergence rates of nonparametric derivative estimators. We…