B0809
Title: A nonparametric doubly robust test for a continuous treatment effect
Authors: Charles Doss - University of Minnesota (United States) [presenting]
Guangwei Weng - University of Minnesota (United States)
Lan Wang - University of Minnesota (United States)
Abstract: The vast majority of literature on evaluating the significance of a treatment effect based on observational data has been confined to discrete treatments. These methods are not applicable to drawing inference for a continuous treatment, which arises in many important applications. To adjust for confounders when evaluating a continuous treatment, existing inference methods often rely on discretizing the treatment or using (possibly misspecified) parametric models for the effect curve. To the best of our knowledge, a completely nonparametric doubly robust approach for inference in this setting is not yet available. We develop such a nonparametric doubly robust procedure for making inferences on the continuous treatment effect curve. Using empirical process techniques for local U- and V-processes, we establish the test statistic's asymptotic distribution. Furthermore, we propose a wild bootstrap procedure for implementing the test in practice. We illustrate the new method via simulations and a study of a constructed dataset relating the effect of nurse staffing hours on hospital performance.
