Calibrating doubly-robust estimators with unbalanced treatment assignment

C-Tier
Journal: Economics Letters
Year: 2024
Volume: 241
Issue: C

Score contribution per author:

1.005 = (α=2.01 / 1 authors) × 0.5x C-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Machine learning methods, particularly the double machine learning (DML) estimator (Chernozhukov et al., 2018), are increasingly popular for the estimation of the average treatment effect (ATE). However, datasets often exhibit unbalanced treatment assignments where only a few observations are treated, leading to unstable propensity score estimations. We propose a simple extension of the DML estimator which undersamples data for propensity score modeling and calibrates scores to match the original distribution. The paper provides theoretical results showing that the estimator retains the DML estimator’s asymptotic properties. A simulation study illustrates the finite sample performance of the estimator.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:ecolet:v:241:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524003227
Journal Field
General
Author Count
1
Added to Database
2026-01-24