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Certified Decisions

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  • Isaiah Andrews
  • Jiafeng Chen

Abstract

Hypothesis tests and confidence intervals are ubiquitous in empirical research, yet their connection to subsequent decision-making is often unclear. We develop a theory of certified decisions that pairs recommended decisions with inferential guarantees. Specifically, we attach P-certificates -- upper bounds on loss that hold with probability at least $1-\alpha$ -- to recommended actions. We show that such certificates allow "safe," risk-controlling adoption decisions for ambiguity-averse downstream decision-makers. We further prove that it is without loss to limit attention to P-certificates arising as minimax decisions over confidence sets, or what Manski (2021) terms "as-if decisions with a set estimate." A parallel argument applies to E-certified decisions obtained from e-values in settings with unbounded loss.

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  • Isaiah Andrews & Jiafeng Chen, 2025. "Certified Decisions," Papers 2502.17830, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2502.17830
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Isaiah Andrews & Toru Kitagawa & Adam McCloskey, 2024. "Inference on Winners," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(1), pages 305-358.
    2. Victor Chernozhukov & Sokbae Lee & Adam M. Rosen & Liyang Sun, 2025. "Policy Learning with Confidence," Papers 2502.10653, arXiv.org.
    3. Charles F. Manski, 2021. "Econometrics for Decision Making: Building Foundations Sketched by Haavelmo and Wald," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(6), pages 2827-2853, November.
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