IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2606.11526.html

What is the Long-Term Value of Reliability?

Author

Listed:
  • Chenyu Qiu
  • Xu Kuang
  • Inessa Liskovich
  • Ali Rauh
  • Stefan Wager

Abstract

We describe Chronos LTV, a system to measure the long-term impact of delays and other service defects on key business metrics. We use Markov decision processes to model customer interactions over time, and formalize our target estimand as the marginal policy effect with respect to moving the average delay rate. Given this setup, we show that we can identify long-term effects under a sequential unconfoundedness assumption where delays are as good as random given observed order characteristics; and can estimate these effects using a simple covariate-balancing algorithm.

Suggested Citation

  • Chenyu Qiu & Xu Kuang & Inessa Liskovich & Ali Rauh & Stefan Wager, 2026. "What is the Long-Term Value of Reliability?," Papers 2606.11526, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2606.11526
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.11526
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kosuke Imai & Marc Ratkovic, 2014. "Covariate balancing propensity score," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 76(1), pages 243-263, January.
    2. Iavor Bojinov & David Simchi-Levi & Jinglong Zhao, 2023. "Design and Analysis of Switchback Experiments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(7), pages 3759-3777, July.
    3. Evan Munro & Xu Kuang & Stefan Wager, 2025. "Treatment Effects in Market Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(10), pages 3273-3321, October.
    4. Davide Viviano & Jelena Bradic, 2021. "Dynamic covariate balancing: estimating treatment effects over time with potential local projections," Papers 2103.01280, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2026.
    5. Heejung Bang & James M. Robins, 2005. "Doubly Robust Estimation in Missing Data and Causal Inference Models," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 962-973, December.
    6. Evan Munro & Xu Kuang & Stefan Wager, 2021. "Treatment Effects in Market Equilibrium," Papers 2109.11647, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2025.
    7. Victor Chernozhukov & Juan Carlos Escanciano & Hidehiko Ichimura & Whitney K. Newey & James M. Robins, 2022. "Locally Robust Semiparametric Estimation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1501-1535, July.
    8. Bryan S. Graham & Cristine Campos De Xavier Pinto & Daniel Egel, 2012. "Inverse Probability Tilting for Moment Condition Models with Missing Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 1053-1079.
    9. Nathan Kallus & Masatoshi Uehara, 2022. "Efficiently Breaking the Curse of Horizon in Off-Policy Evaluation with Double Reinforcement Learning," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 70(6), pages 3282-3302, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Frölich, Markus & Huber, Martin & Wiesenfarth, Manuel, 2017. "The finite sample performance of semi- and non-parametric estimators for treatment effects and policy evaluation," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 91-102.
    2. Cousineau, Martin & Verter, Vedat & Murphy, Susan A. & Pineau, Joelle, 2023. "Estimating causal effects with optimization-based methods: A review and empirical comparison," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(2), pages 367-380.
    3. Ganesh Karapakula, 2023. "Stable Probability Weighting: Large-Sample and Finite-Sample Estimation and Inference Methods for Heterogeneous Causal Effects of Multivalued Treatments Under Limited Overlap," Papers 2301.05703, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.
    4. Martin Cousineau & Vedat Verter & Susan A. Murphy & Joelle Pineau, 2022. "Estimating causal effects with optimization-based methods: A review and empirical comparison," Papers 2203.00097, arXiv.org.
    5. Kwun Chuen Gary Chan & Sheung Chi Phillip Yam & Zheng Zhang, 2016. "Globally efficient non-parametric inference of average treatment effects by empirical balancing calibration weighting," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 78(3), pages 673-700, June.
    6. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Zhao, Jun, 2020. "Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 101-122.
    7. Zichen Deng & Maarten Lindeboom, 2021. "Early-life Famine Exposure, Hunger Recall and Later-life Health," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 21-054/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    8. Jelena Bradic & Weijie Ji & Yuqian Zhang, 2021. "High-dimensional Inference for Dynamic Treatment Effects," Papers 2110.04924, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    9. Pedro H. C. Sant'Anna & Xiaojun Song & Qi Xu, 2022. "Covariate distribution balance via propensity scores," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(6), pages 1093-1120, September.
    10. Dmitry Arkhangelsky & Guido W. Imbens & Lihua Lei & Xiaoman Luo, 2024. "Design‐robust two‐way‐fixed‐effects regression for panel data," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(4), pages 999-1034, November.
    11. Yuhang Wu & Zeyu Zheng & Guangyu Zhang & Zuohua Zhang & Chu Wang, 2025. "Nonstationary A/B Tests: Optimal Variance Reduction, Bias Correction, and Valid Inference," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(6), pages 4707-4727, June.
    12. Firpo, Sergio Pinheiro & Pinto, Rafael de Carvalho Cayres, 2012. "Combining Strategies for the Estimation of Treatment Effects," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 32(1), March.
    13. Victor Chernozhukov & Vira Semenova, 2018. "Simultaneous inference for Best Linear Predictor of the Conditional Average Treatment Effect and other structural functions," CeMMAP working papers CWP40/18, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    14. Hao Cheng & Ying Wei, 2018. "A fast imputation algorithm in quantile regression," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 33(4), pages 1589-1603, December.
    15. Graham, Bryan S. & Pinto, Cristine Campos de Xavier, 2022. "Semiparametrically efficient estimation of the average linear regression function," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 226(1), pages 115-138.
    16. Jiafeng Chen & David M. Ritzwoller, 2021. "Semiparametric Estimation of Long-Term Treatment Effects," Papers 2107.14405, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    17. Lewbel, Arthur & Choi, Jin Young & Zhou, Zhuzhu, 2023. "Over-identified Doubly Robust identification and estimation," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(1), pages 25-42.
    18. Marianne BLÉHAUT & Xavier D'HAULTFOEUILLE & Jérémy L'HOUR & Alexandre B. TSYBAKOV, 2020. "An alternative to synthetic control for models with many covariates under sparsity," Working Papers 2020-17, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    19. Yang Ning & Sida Peng & Jing Tao, 2020. "Doubly Robust Semiparametric Difference-in-Differences Estimators with High-Dimensional Data," Papers 2009.03151, arXiv.org.
    20. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2606.11526. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.