arXiv:2605.30319stat.MLcs.AI2026-05被引 1

用矩阵补全提升个体化治疗效果估计精度,更准且高效。

Improved Guarantees for Heterogeneous Treatment-Effect Estimation via Matrix Completion

  • 将个体治疗效果建模为矩阵,通过低秩假设进行补全。
  • 在无倾向得分知识下实现每行误差约√(1/n + n/m²)的紧界。
  • 首个精确的行级误差分析,适合因果推断与面板数据分析者。

现代因果推断的核心目标是估计异质性处理效应,回答“干预对每个单位有何影响”而非仅平均效应。本文研究面板数据下的该问题:观察到n个单位在m个时间点上的非均匀处理分配。数据可自然表示为单位-时间处理效应矩阵,估计异质性处理效应即估计矩阵每行的平均值。我们将其建模为矩阵补全问题,在标准低秩性和正则性假设下求解。现有矩阵补全理论对每行误差的保证不足,仅适用于平均效应估计。本文提出一种简单高效的估计器,无需倾向得分信息,在标准假设下实现行级ℓ₂误差O˜(√(1/n + n/m²))。技术上,首次建立了低秩逼近的精确行级ℓ₂扰动界,补充了现有的谱范数、Frobenius和逐项扰动理论。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

A central goal of modern causal inference is estimating heterogeneous treatment effects to answer questions like "how does an intervention affect each unit," rather than only on average. We study this problem with panel-data where we observe $n$ units across $m$ times under unknown, non-uniform treatment assignments. The data in this setting is naturally represented as a matrix of all unit--time treatment effects. Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects can then be expressed as obtaining a good estimation of each row's average in this matrix. This allows us to formulate the problem as matrix completion, which can be solved under natural low-rankness assumptions. However, existing matrix-completion guarantees are not powerful enough to get meaningful bounds for the per-row guarantee required for estimating the heterogeneous treatment effect; roughly speaking, they are only useful for estimating average treatment effect bounds, as also illustrated in a recent line of work. We give a simple, computationally efficient estimator that, without knowledge of the propensities and under standard low-rankness and regularity assumptions, achieves a row-wise $\ell_2$ error of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{\frac{1}{n} + \frac{n}{m^2}})$. Technically, our analysis establishes the first sharp row-wise $\ell_2$-perturbation bound for low-rank approximation, complementing existing spectral-, Frobenius-, and entrywise perturbation theory.

因果推断矩阵补全异质效应

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