Metalearners for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects using machine learning
Abstract
Estimating and analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects is timely, yet challenging. We introduce a unifying framework for many conditional average treatment effect estimators, and we propose a metalearner, the X-learner, which can adapt to structural properties, such as the smoothness and sparsity of the underlying treatment effect. We present its favorable properties, using theory and simulations. We apply it, using random forests, to two field experiments in political science, where it is shown to be easy to use and to produce results that are interpretable.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 15, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1804597116
Entities
People
- Bin Yu
- Jasjeet S. Sekhon
- Peter J. Bickel
- Soren R. Kunzel
Organizations
- Army Research Office
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- Statistics New Zealand