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Poster

Unveiling the Potential of Robustness in Selecting Conditional Average Treatment Effect Estimators

Yiyan Huang · Cheuk Hang LEUNG · Siyi WANG · YIJUN LI · Qi WU

West Ballroom A-D #5108
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Thu 12 Dec 11 a.m. PST — 2 p.m. PST

Abstract:

The growing demand for personalized decision-making has led to a surge of interest in estimating the Conditional Average Treatment Effect (CATE). Various types of CATE estimators have been developed with advancements in machine learning and causal inference. However, selecting the desirable CATE estimator through a conventional model validation procedure remains impractical due to the absence of counterfactual outcomes in observational data. Existing approaches for CATE estimator selection, such as plug-in and pseudo-outcome metrics, face two challenges. First, they must determine the metric form and the underlying machine learning models for fitting nuisance parameters (e.g., outcome function, propensity function, and plug-in learner). Second, they lack a specific focus on selecting a robust CATE estimator. To address these challenges, this paper introduces a Distributionally Robust Metric (DRM) for CATE estimator selection. The proposed DRM is nuisance-free, eliminating the need to fit models for nuisance parameters, and it effectively prioritizes the selection of a distributionally robust CATE estimator. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the DRM method in selecting a CATE estimator that is robust to the uncertainty of counterfactual distribution incurred by covariate shift and unmeasured confounders.

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