On the Asymptotic Inadmissibility of Double Machine Learning Estimators Under Structure-Agnostic Models

The paper investigates Double Machine Learning (DML) estimators under structure‑agnostic (SA) models, which assume the data‑generating law lies within a neighborhood of fixed machine‑learning estimates. It shows that for two of three studied functionals—the quadratic functional in the Gaussian sequence model and the quadratic density integral functional—the DML estimators are asymptotically inadmissible, being dominated by second‑order empirical higher‑order influence function (HOIF) estimators. For the third functional, the expected conditional covariance, both DML and HOIF estimators remain minimax but neither dominates the other.

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