# Equal-information evaluation of credit assignment in modular financial reinforcement learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.14750 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14750/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Adversarial robustness and RL in finance, one of 15 directions in Deep reinforcement learning methods.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2026.

## Placed in

- Deep reinforcement learning methods / [Adversarial robustness and RL in finance](https://mlsanity.com/deeprl/adversarial-robustness-and-rl-in-finance/)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Credit assignment in modular financial reinforcement learning is difficult to evaluate because an attributed signal may improve a component loss without adding decision-relevant information or improving economic outcomes. We propose an evaluation framework combining equal-information reconstruction controls, fixed-utility comparisons and prespecified downstream guardrails. The framework is instantiated in an attribution-guided modular trading architecture and tested in three controlled studies covering update allocation, supervision-target representation and portfolio risk control. We find that residual-based allocation is exactly reproduced by an ordinary loss-budget control under the disclosed interface; direct shortfall supervision improves component prediction but fails decoded-outcome preservation; and component-wise critic supervision worsens risk-condition certainty equivalent and drawdown relative to scalar supervision under fixed utility. These results identify three distinct evaluation failures: redundant attribution signals, representation-induced prediction trade-offs, and misalignment between component supervision and downstream risk outcomes. A preserved historical engineering case further shows why module-level learning claims require run-level provenance. The contribution is a reusable methodology for evaluating credit assignment in expert systems operating under partial observability, delayed feedback and economic risk constraints.