arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 23

Conditional Distributional Treatment Effects: Doubly Robust Estimation and Testing

The paper introduces a new estimand for conditional distributional treatment effects that captures how treatments influence the entire outcome distribution, including variance and tail risks, in a covariate-dependent manner. It presents a doubly robust estimator that is minimax optimal locally and uses it to construct a test for global homogeneity of conditional potential outcome distributions. The test accommodates discrepancies beyond the maximum mean discrepancy, guarantees valid type‑1 error, is consistent against fixed alternatives, and includes a computationally efficient, permutation‑free algorithm with exact closed‑form expressions for two natural discrepancies.

By Saksham Jain, Alex Luedtke
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 9

Conditional Kernel Stein Discrepancy

The paper introduces a Conditional Kernel Stein Discrepancy (CKSD) that extends traditional Kernel Stein Discrepancies to evaluate goodness‑of‑fit for conditional distributions. By employing an operator‑valued kernel on the covariate space, the authors lift unconditional KSDs to settings where only a conditional target model and joint samples are available, covering both smooth manifolds and discrete spaces. They prove that the CKSD statistic vanishes exactly when the conditional model matches the true conditional distribution for almost all covariates, and demonstrate its practical effectiveness through experiments on level, power, and runtime.

By Federico Matteucci, Florian Kalinke