IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/stapro/v199y2023ics0167715223000780.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects versus building individualized treatment rules: Connection and disconnection

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Zhongyuan
  • Xie, Jun

Abstract

Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects is a well studied topic in the statistics literature. More recently, it has regained attention due to an increasing need for precision medicine as well as the increased use of state-of-art machine learning methods in the estimation. Furthermore, estimating heterogeneous treatment effects is directly related to building an individualized treatment rule, which is a decision rule of treatment according to patient characteristics. This paper examines the connection and disconnection between these two research problems. Notably, a better estimation of the heterogeneous treatment effects may or may not lead to a better individualized treatment rule. We provide theoretical frameworks to explain the connection and disconnection and demonstrate two different scenarios through simulations. Our conclusion sheds light on a practical guide that under certain circumstances, there is no need to enhance estimation of the treatment effects, as it does not alter the treatment decision.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Zhongyuan & Xie, Jun, 2023. "Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects versus building individualized treatment rules: Connection and disconnection," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:stapro:v:199:y:2023:i:c:s0167715223000780
    DOI: 10.1016/j.spl.2023.109854
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167715223000780
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.spl.2023.109854?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stefan Wager & Susan Athey, 2018. "Estimation and Inference of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects using Random Forests," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 113(523), pages 1228-1242, July.
    2. Yingqi Zhao & Donglin Zeng & A. John Rush & Michael R. Kosorok, 2012. "Estimating Individualized Treatment Rules Using Outcome Weighted Learning," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(499), pages 1106-1118, September.
    3. Lin, Yi, 2004. "A note on margin-based loss functions in classification," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 73-82, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Augustine Denteh & Helge Liebert, 2022. "Who Increases Emergency Department Use? New Insights from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment," Working Papers 2201, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    2. Michael C. Knaus & Michael Lechner & Anthony Strittmatter, 2022. "Heterogeneous Employment Effects of Job Search Programs: A Machine Learning Approach," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 57(2), pages 597-636.
    3. Carlos Fernández-Loría & Foster Provost & Jesse Anderton & Benjamin Carterette & Praveen Chandar, 2023. "A Comparison of Methods for Treatment Assignment with an Application to Playlist Generation," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 34(2), pages 786-803, June.
    4. Carlos Fernández-Loría & Foster Provost, 2022. "Causal Decision Making and Causal Effect Estimation Are Not the Same…and Why It Matters," INFORMS Joural on Data Science, INFORMS, vol. 1(1), pages 4-16, April.
    5. Hyung G. Park & Danni Wu & Eva Petkova & Thaddeus Tarpey & R. Todd Ogden, 2023. "Bayesian Index Models for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects on a Binary Outcome," Statistics in Biosciences, Springer;International Chinese Statistical Association, vol. 15(2), pages 397-418, July.
    6. Engel, Christoph, 2020. "Estimating heterogeneous reactions to experimental treatments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 178(C), pages 124-147.
    7. Gabriel Okasa, 2022. "Meta-Learners for Estimation of Causal Effects: Finite Sample Cross-Fit Performance," Papers 2201.12692, arXiv.org.
    8. Nathan Kallus, 2023. "Treatment Effect Risk: Bounds and Inference," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4579-4590, August.
    9. Nathan Kallus, 2022. "Treatment Effect Risk: Bounds and Inference," Papers 2201.05893, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2022.
    10. Shi, Chengchun & Wan, Runzhe & Song, Ge & Luo, Shikai & Zhu, Hongtu & Song, Rui, 2023. "A multiagent reinforcement learning framework for off-policy evaluation in two-sided markets," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117174, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Baojiang Chen & Ao Yuan & Jing Qin, 2022. "Pool adjacent violators algorithm–assisted learning with application on estimating optimal individualized treatment regimes," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 78(4), pages 1475-1488, December.
    12. Christopher Adjaho & Timothy Christensen, 2022. "Externally Valid Policy Choice," Papers 2205.05561, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    13. Lechner, Michael, 2018. "Modified Causal Forests for Estimating Heterogeneous Causal Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 12040, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. William Arbour, 2021. "Can Recidivism be Prevented from Behind Bars? Evidence from a Behavioral Program," Working Papers tecipa-683, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    15. Dimitris Bertsimas & Agni Orfanoudaki & Rory B. Weiner, 2020. "Personalized treatment for coronary artery disease patients: a machine learning approach," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 482-506, December.
    16. Jin Wang & Donglin Zeng & D. Y. Lin, 2022. "Semiparametric single-index models for optimal treatment regimens with censored outcomes," Lifetime Data Analysis: An International Journal Devoted to Statistical Methods and Applications for Time-to-Event Data, Springer, vol. 28(4), pages 744-763, October.
    17. Stephen Jarvis & Olivier Deschenes & Akshaya Jha, 2022. "The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 1311-1346.
    18. Hayakawa, Kazunobu & Keola, Souknilanh & Silaphet, Korrakoun & Yamanouchi, Kenta, 2022. "Estimating the impacts of international bridges on foreign firm locations: a machine learning approach," IDE Discussion Papers 847, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    19. Davide Viviano & Jelena Bradic, 2019. "Synthetic learner: model-free inference on treatments over time," Papers 1904.01490, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    20. Naguib, Costanza, 2019. "Estimating the Heterogeneous Impact of the Free Movement of Persons on Relative Wage Mobility," Economics Working Paper Series 1903, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:stapro:v:199:y:2023:i:c:s0167715223000780. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/622892/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.