Improved Estimation of Average Treatment Effects on the Treated: Local Efficiency, Double Robustness, and Beyond

Abstract

Estimation of average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) is an important topic of causal inference in econometrics and statistics. This problem seems to be often treated as a simple modification or extension of that of estimating overall average treatment effects (ATE). However, the propensity score is no longer ancillary for estimation of ATT, in contrast with estimation of ATE. In this article, we review semiparametric theory for estimation of ATT and the use of efficient influence functionsto derive augmented inverse probability weighted (AIPW) estimators that are locally efficient and doubly robust. Moreover, we discuss improved estimation over AIPW by developing calibrated regression and likelihood estimators that are not only locally efficient and doubly robust, but also intrinsically efficient in achieving smaller variances than AIPW estimators when a propensity score model is correctly specified but an outcome regression model may be misspecified. Finally, we present two simulation studies and an econometric application to demonstrate the advantage of the proposed methods when compared with existing methods.