Empirical Study on the Impact of Network Architecture on Causal Effect Estimation with TARNet
M.M. Witczak (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
JH Krijthe – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)
R.K.A. Karlsson – Mentor (TU Delft - Pattern Recognition and Bioinformatics)
R. Guerra Marroquim – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Computer Graphics and Visualisation)
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Abstract
Estimating the Conditional Average Treatment Effect (CATE) with neural networks adapted for causal inference, like TARNet, is a promising approach, yet the impact of model architecture on performance remains underexplored.
This paper systematically investigates how the depth and width of TARNet affect the CATE estimation in diverse simulated data environments. The research investigates two central questions: how TARNet's performance varies across data regimes (e.g., confounding strength, sample size), and how its optimal architecture changes in response to these conditions.
A comprehensive set of simulation-based experiments is conducted using the CATENets framework, isolating and varying factors such as sample size, feature dimensionality, confounding strength, and the presence of noise. The results demonstrate that deeper architectures generally yield better performance in complex or high-dimensional scenarios, whereas narrower networks are preferable in small-sample or high-noise settings due to their regularizing effect. Furthermore, the findings suggest that there is no universally optimal architecture. The best configuration depends on the specific characteristics of the data. The study concludes with practical recommendations for architecture selection based on the experiments conducted.