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一个工具变量统领全局：恰好识别工具变量估计的偏差与覆盖率AI 解读

We revisit the finite-sample behavior of single-variable just-identified instrumental variables (just-ID IV) estimators, arguing that in most microeconometric applications, the usual inference strategies are likely reliable. Three widely-cited applications are used to explain why this is so. We then consider pretesting strategies of the form $t_{1}>c$, where $t_{1}$ is the first-stage $t$-statistic, and the first-stage sign is given. Although pervasive in empirical practice,…

部分识别下的个体化决策：三种视角、两个最优性结果与一个悖论AI 解读

Unmeasured confounding is a threat to causal inference and gives rise to biased estimates. In this article, we consider the problem of individualized decision-making under partial identification. Firstly, we argue that when faced with unmeasured confounding, one should pursue individualized decision-making using partial identification in a comprehensive manner. We establish a formal link between individualized decision-making under partial identification and classical…

快速偏分位数回归AI 解读

Partial least squares (PLS) is a dimensionality reduction technique used as an alternative to ordinary least squares (OLS) in situations where the data is colinear or high dimensional. Both PLS and OLS provide mean based estimates, which are extremely sensitive to the presence of outliers or heavy tailed distributions. In contrast, quantile regression is an alternative to OLS that computes robust quantile based estimates. In this work, the multivariate PLS is extended to the…

重尾变量与混杂因素的因果建模：河流流量应用AI 解读

Confounding variables are a recurrent challenge for causal discovery and inference. In many situations, complex causal mechanisms only manifest themselves in extreme events, or take simpler forms in the extremes. Stimulated by data on extreme river flows and precipitation, we introduce a new causal discovery methodology for heavy-tailed variables that allows the effect of a known potential confounder to be almost entirely removed when the variables have comparable tails, and…

单人随机试验的样本量计算AI 解读

N-of-1 trials, single participant trials in which multiple treatments are sequentially randomized over the study period, can give direct estimates of individual-specific treatment effects. Combining n-of-1 trials gives extra information for estimating the population average treatment effect compared with randomized controlled trials and increases precision for individual-specific treatment effect estimates. In this paper, we present a procedure for designing n-of-1 trials.…

噪声信息下网络级联源头的最快推断AI 解读

We study the problem of estimating the source of a network cascade given a time series of noisy information about the spread. Initially, there is a single vertex affected by the cascade (the source) and the cascade spreads in discrete time steps across the network. The cascade evolution is hidden, but one can observe a time series of noisy signals from each vertex. The time series of a vertex is assumed to be a sequence of i.i.d. samples from a pre-change distribution $Q_0$ b…

RieszNet 与 ForestRiesz：神经网络和随机森林的自动去偏机器学习AI 解读

Many causal and policy effects of interest are defined by linear functionals of high-dimensional or non-parametric regression functions. $\sqrt{n}$-consistent and asymptotically normal estimation of the object of interest requires debiasing to reduce the effects of regularization and/or model selection on the object of interest. Debiasing is typically achieved by adding a correction term to the plug-in estimator of the functional, which leads to properties such as…

整群随机试验中的效应定义与估计：方法比较AI 解读

Across research disciplines, cluster randomized trials (CRTs) are commonly implemented to evaluate interventions delivered to groups of participants, such as communities and clinics. Despite advances in the design and analysis of CRTs, several challenges remain. First, there are many possible ways to specify the causal effect of interest (e.g., at the individual-level or at the cluster-level). Second, the theoretical and practical performance of common methods for CRT…

函数型工具变量回归及移民对本地工资影响的估计AI 解读

Functional linear regression gets its popularity as a statistical tool to study the relationship between function-valued response and exogenous explanatory variables. However, in practice, it is hard to expect that the explanatory variables of interest are perfectly exogenous, due to, for example, the presence of omitted variables and measurement error. Despite its empirical relevance, it was not until recently that this issue of endogeneity was studied in the literature on…

存在干扰、不依从和结果缺失的两阶段随机实验贝叶斯分析AI 解读

Three critical issues for causal inference that often occur in modern, complicated experiments are interference, treatment nonadherence, and missing outcomes. A great deal of research efforts has been dedicated to developing causal inferential methodologies that address these issues separately. However, methodologies that can address these issues simultaneously are lacking. We propose a Bayesian causal inference methodology to address this gap. Our methodology extends…

增量因果效应：介绍与综述AI 解读

In this chapter, we review the class of causal effects based on incremental propensity scores interventions proposed by Kennedy [2019]. The aim of incremental propensity score interventions is to estimate the effect of increasing or decreasing subjects' odds of receiving treatment; this differs from the average treatment effect, where the aim is to estimate the effect of everyone deterministically receiving versus not receiving treatment. We first present incremental causal…

利用 Wasserstein 空间方差最小化进行不变因果预测AI 解读

Selecting powerful predictors for an outcome is a cornerstone task for machine learning. However, some types of questions can only be answered by identifying the predictors that causally affect the outcome. A recent approach to this causal inference problem leverages the invariance property of a causal mechanism across differing experimental environments (Peters et al., 2016; Heinze-Deml et al., 2018). This method, invariant causal prediction (ICP), has a substantial…

用于分析自由贸易协定决定因素的二元组双重去偏机器学习AI 解读

This paper presents novel methods and theories for estimation and inference about parameters in econometric models using machine learning for nuisance parameters estimation when data are dyadic. We propose a dyadic cross fitting method to remove over-fitting biases under arbitrary dyadic dependence. Together with the use of Neyman orthogonal scores, this novel cross fitting method enables root-$n$ consistent estimation and inference robustly against dyadic dependence. We…

序贯可忽略性下部分可观测马尔可夫决策过程的离策略评估AI 解读

We consider off-policy evaluation of dynamic treatment rules under sequential ignorability, given an assumption that the underlying system can be modeled as a partially observed Markov decision process (POMDP). We propose an estimator, partial history importance weighting, and show that it can consistently estimate the stationary mean rewards of a target policy given long enough draws from the behavior policy. We provide an upper bound on its error that decays polynomially…

注意力过载AI 解读

We introduce an Attention Overload Model (AOM) in which alternatives compete for attention, so each alternative's consideration probability weakly decreases as the choice problem expands. This nonparametric restriction has a search-capacity foundation. We identify exactly which preference rankings are compatible with observed choices and establish sharp bounds on latent attention. We then consider heterogeneous preferences in settings where alternatives are presented in a…

非参数工具变量模型的有效估计：多种神经网络估计量比较AI 解读

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) can be viewed as nonlinear sieves that can approximate complex functions of high dimensional variables more effectively than linear sieves. We investigate the performance of various ANNs in nonparametric instrumental variables (NPIV) models of moderately high dimensional covariates that are relevant to empirical economics. We present two efficient procedures for estimation and inference on a weighted average derivative (WAD): an…

警惕基尼指数：一种新的不平等测度AI 解读

The Gini index underestimates inequality for heavy-tailed distributions: for example, a Pareto distribution with exponent 1.5 (which has infinite variance) has the same Gini index as any exponential distribution (a mere 0.5). This is because the Gini index is relatively robust to extreme observations: while a statistic's robustness to extremes is desirable for data potentially distorted by outliers, it is misleading for heavy-tailed distributions, which inherently exhibit…

使用地理编码微观数据的双重差分AI 解读

This paper formalizes a common approach for estimating effects of treatment at a specific location using geocoded microdata. This estimator compares units immediately next to treatment (an inner-ring) to units just slightly further away (an outer-ring). I introduce intuitive assumptions needed to identify the average treatment effect among the affected units and illustrates pitfalls that occur when these assumptions fail. Since one of these assumptions requires knowledge of…

处理与结果仅部分标注时平均处理效应的高效稳健半监督估计AI 解读

A notable challenge of leveraging Electronic Health Records (EHR) for treatment effect assessment is the lack of precise information on important clinical variables, including the treatment received and the response. Both treatment information and response often cannot be accurately captured by readily available EHR features and require labor intensive manual chart review to precisely annotate, which limits the number of available gold standard labels on these key variables.…

含无效工具变量的半参数有效G估计AI 解读

The instrumental variable method is widely used in the health and social sciences for identification and estimation of causal effects in the presence of potentially unmeasured confounding. In order to improve efficiency, multiple instruments are routinely used, leading to concerns about bias due to possible violation of the instrumental variable assumptions. To address this concern, we introduce a new class of g-estimators that are guaranteed to remain consistent and…

使用面板 Tobit 模型进行预测AI 解读

We use a dynamic panel Tobit model with heteroskedasticity to generate forecasts for a large cross-section of short time series of censored observations. Our fully Bayesian approach allows us to flexibly estimate the cross-sectional distribution of heterogeneous coefficients and then implicitly use this distribution as prior to construct Bayes forecasts for the individual time series. In addition to density forecasts, we construct set forecasts that explicitly target the…

CAPITAL：通过约束政策树搜索识别最优子群体AI 解读

Personalized medicine, a paradigm of medicine tailored to a patient's characteristics, is an increasingly attractive field in health care. An important goal of personalized medicine is to identify a subgroup of patients, based on baseline covariates, that benefits more from the targeted treatment than other comparative treatments. Most of the current subgroup identification methods only focus on obtaining a subgroup with an enhanced treatment effect without paying attention…

高维动态处理效应的统计推断AI 解读

Estimating dynamic treatment effects is a crucial endeavor in causal inference, particularly when confronted with high-dimensional confounders. Doubly robust (DR) approaches have emerged as promising tools for estimating treatment effects due to their flexibility. However, we showcase that the traditional DR approaches that only focus on the DR representation of the expected outcomes may fall short of delivering optimal results. In this paper, we propose a novel DR…

利用混杂变量重要性学习推断多个处理效应AI 解读

We address modelling and computational issues for multiple treatment effect inference under many potential confounders. Our main contribution is providing a trade-off between preventing the omission of relevant confounders, while not running into an over-selection of instruments that significantly inflates variance. We propose a novel empirical Bayes framework for Bayesian model averaging that learns from data the prior inclusion probabilities of key covariates. Our…