Nested Expectations with kernel Quadrature

Abstract

This paper considers the challenging computational task of estimating nested expectations. Existing algorithms, such as nested Monte Carlo or multilevel Monte Carlo, are known to be consistent but require a large number of samples at both inner and outer levels to converge. Instead, we propose a novel estimator consisting of nested kernel quadrature estimators and we prove that it has a faster convergence rate than all baseline methods when the integrands have sufficient smoothness. We then demonstrate empirically that our proposed method does indeed require fewer samples to estimate nested expectations on real-world applications including Bayesian optimisation, option pricing, and health economics.

Publication
In International Conference on Machine Learning
Masha Naslidnyk
Masha Naslidnyk
PhD Student
François-Xavier Briol
François-Xavier Briol
Associate Professor