English

Identification of Latent Group Effects under Conditional Calibration

Methodology 2026-04-13 v1 Econometrics Computation

Abstract

We study identification of a structural group effect when the group indicator G{0,1}G\in\{0,1\} is unobserved but the analyst observes a calibrated probability score p[0,1]p\in[0,1] satisfying E[Gp,X]=p\mathbb{E}[G|p,X]=p. Under a constant-coefficient structural mean model, the latent-group coefficient τ\tau is point-identified from the joint law of observables (Y,X,p)(Y,X,p) by a simple ratio of weighted moments: the covariance of the signed score 2p12p-1 with the covariate-partialled outcome, divided by twice the residual variance of the score after conditioning on covariates. Identification fails if and only if the score is a deterministic function of XX; we establish this by constructing an explicit continuum of observationally equivalent models indexed by arbitrary values of τ\tau. The identified coefficient differs from the marginal latent mean gap by a compositional term that is unidentified without further assumptions; we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the two to coincide. The oracle estimator is n\sqrt{n}-consistent and asymptotically normal with a closed-form sandwich variance. Under calibration error bounded uniformly by δ\delta, the bias is bounded by τE[2p1]δ(2V)1|\tau|\,\mathbb{E}[|2p-1|]\,\delta\,(2V^*)^{-1}, a bound that is sharp over all calibration error functions of that magnitude. Hard-threshold classification at p=1/2p=1/2 attenuates the estimated gap by a factor strictly less than one. Monte Carlo experiments confirm the asymptotic theory, trace the divergence of RMSE as V0V^*\to 0, illustrate the attenuation bias of hard-threshold classification, and verify identification of the variance-weighted estimand under heterogeneous effects.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.08798,
  title  = {Identification of Latent Group Effects under Conditional Calibration},
  author = {Marcell T. Kurbucz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.08798},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

31 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:02:09.519Z