每日简报

插补就够了：平均处理效应估计的双稳健、半参数有效性与自动协变量平衡AI 解读

Imputation-based causal estimation is typically viewed as relying exclusively on an outcome model, in contrast to augmented inverse-probability weighting, whose consistency is protected by fitting two nuisance models. This paper argues that this view can be misleading by highlighting a hidden dual weighting structure in least-squares sieve regression imputation. Although only outcome regressions are explicitly fitted, the resulting imputation estimator admits an exact…

持续在线实验：动态处理下的序贯检验与错误发现率控制AI 解读

Generative AI has dramatically accelerated the rate at which new treatments---from novel pharmaceuticals to online marketing campaigns---can be conceived and deployed. As a result, modern experimentation platforms often run continuously, with treatments added as they are ready and removed when they underperform. We formalize this "Always-On" experimental setting, in which treatments can be dynamically generated, added to, and removed from a running experiment, and study the…

含时间趋势试验中的估计目标与估计方法AI 解读

In platform trials, model-based approaches typically estimate treatment effects conditional on calendar time. However, scientific and regulatory interest often lies in treatment effects defined for a target population spanning multiple enrollment periods, requiring explicit consideration of how effects should be averaged across time. This raises two fundamental challenges. The first is the definition of the appropriate target estimand when combining data across multiple…

不可测混杂下因果效应估计的近端平衡方法AI 解读

Estimating causal effects from observational data is central to science and policy, but the effects are not identified when confounders are unmeasured. Proximal causal inference addresses this problem with proxies of the unmeasured confounders. However, existing proxy-based approaches either designate proxy roles and solve an inverse problem, which is ill-posed and hard to estimate with high-dimensional proxies, or use a latent-variable model, which assumes that the learned…

熵正则化最优传输下的部分识别AI 解读

In many statistical settings, the available data and maintained assumptions do not suffice to uniquely identify the model parameters of interest. In such cases, one can only identify sets which are guaranteed to contain the true parameters. These are often characterized through linear programs that optimize over models compatible with the observed data. These programs can be infinite-dimensional in the optimizer and the number of constraints. We provide a unified way to…

受约束分类与政策学习AI 解读

Modern machine learning approaches to classification, including AdaBoost, support vector machines, and deep neural networks, utilize surrogate loss techniques to circumvent the computational complexity of minimizing empirical classification risk. These techniques are also useful for causal policy learning problems, since estimation of individualized treatment rules can be cast as a weighted (cost-sensitive) classification problem. Consistency of the surrogate loss approaches…

离散选择面板模型中平均效应的界AI 解读

In discrete choice panel data, estimation of average effects is crucial for quantifying the effect of covariates, and for policy evaluation and counterfactual analysis. However, in short panels with individual-specific effects, challenges arise due to partial identification and the incidental parameter problem. In particular, estimating the sharp identified set of average effects becomes impractical when covariates have large support sets, such as when they are continuous.…

挖掘因果关系：人工智能辅助搜索工具变量AI 解读

The instrumental variables (IVs) method is a leading empirical strategy for causal inference. Finding IVs is a heuristic and creative process, and justifying their validity---especially exclusion restrictions---is largely rhetorical. We propose using large language models (LLMs) to search for new IVs through narratives and counterfactual reasoning, similar to how a human researcher would. The stark difference, however, is that LLMs can dramatically accelerate this process…

扰动效用模型的 Fenchel–Young 估计量AI 解读

Perturbed Utility Models (PUMs) represent discrete choice as utility maximization under convex perturbation or regularization, encompassing a broad class of choice models, including Multinomial Logit (MNL) and models that permit zero choice probabilities. Because, for general perturbations, maximum likelihood may be non-convex, and the negative log-likelihood is infinite when a sparse model assigns zero probability to an observed choice, we specialize the Fenchel--Young…

随机实验的一般设计型框架与估计器AI 解读

We describe a widely applicable design-based framework for drawing causal inference in randomized experiments. Causal effects are defined as linear functionals evaluated at unit-level potential outcome functions. Assumptions about the potential outcome functions are encoded as function spaces. This makes the framework expressive, allowing experimenters to formulate and investigate a wide range of causal questions that previously could not be investigated with design-based…

关于 Forré 条件独立概念与连续变量因果演算的札记AI 解读

Recently, Forré (arXiv:2104.11547, 2021) introduced transitional conditional independence, a notion of conditional independence that provides a unified framework for both random and non-stochastic variables. The original paper establishes a strong global Markov property connecting transitional conditional independencies with suitable graphical separation criteria for directed mixed graphs with input nodes (iDMGs), together with a version of causal calculus for iDMGs in a…

贝叶斯神经网络辅助多处理混合治愈生存模型：儿科肿瘤应用AI 解读

Estimating covariate-conditional treatment effects in multi-arm oncology studies is complicated when treatment arms have common distributional features and a non-negligible fraction of patients achieve long-term remission. We propose a joint mixture cure model with covariate-dependent mixtures of log-normal kernels with treatment-specific inclusions. Both linear and neural-network-assisted non-linear covariate links are proposed. Specifically, the susceptible survival…

Large language models are increasingly used to classify text at scale. Because their outputs are stochastic, it is common to query a model several times per item and aggregate the results, and latent class models offer a principled way to convert such repeated ratings into estimates of outcome prevalence and of the model's error rates. These models assume that repeated ratings of the same item are conditionally independent given the true label. We examine this assumption…