Comment on "automated versus do-it-yourself methods for causal inference: Lessons learned from a data analysis competition"

Abstract

Dorie and co-authors (DHSSC) are to be congratulated for initiating the ACIC Data Challenge. Their project engaged the community and accelerated research by providing a level playing field for comparing the performance of a priori specified algorithms. DHSSC identified themes concerning characteristics of the DGP, properties of the estimators, and inference.We discuss these themes in the context of targeted learning.