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异质处理效应下的双向固定效应与双重差分：文献综述AI 解读

Linear regressions with period and group fixed effects are widely used to estimate policies' effects: 26 of the 100 most cited papers published by the American Economic Review from 2015 to 2019 estimate such regressions. It has recently been shown that those regressions may produce misleading estimates, if the policy's effect is heterogeneous between groups or over time, as is often the case. This survey reviews a fast-growing literature that documents this issue, and that…

整群随机试验中的混合模型协方差分析AI 解读

In the analyses of cluster-randomized trials, mixed-model analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) is a standard approach for covariate adjustment and handling within-cluster correlations. However, when the normality, linearity, or the random-intercept assumption is violated, the validity and efficiency of the mixed-model ANCOVA estimators for estimating the average treatment effect remain unclear. Under the potential outcomes framework, we prove that the mixed-model ANCOVA…

目标人群处理效应的联邦自适应因果估计（FACE）AI 解读

Federated learning of causal estimands may greatly improve estimation efficiency by leveraging data from multiple study sites, but robustness to heterogeneity and model misspecifications is vital for ensuring validity. We develop a Federated Adaptive Causal Estimation (FACE) framework to incorporate heterogeneous data from multiple sites to provide treatment effect estimation and inference for a flexibly specified target population of interest. FACE accounts for site-level…

空间混杂的因果推断框架AI 解读

Over the past few decades, addressing "spatial confounding" has become a major topic in spatial statistics. However, the literature has provided conflicting definitions, and many proposed solutions are tied to specific analysis models and do not address the issue of confounding as it is understood in causal inference. We offer an analysis-model-agnostic definition of spatial confounding as the existence of an unmeasured causal confounder variable with a spatial structure. We…

长话短说：因果机器学习中的遗漏变量偏误AI 解读

We develop a general theory of omitted variable bias for a wide range of common causal parameters, including (but not limited to) averages of potential outcomes, average treatment effects, average causal derivatives, and policy effects from covariate shifts. Our theory applies to nonparametric models, while naturally allowing for (semi-)parametric restrictions (such as partial linearity) when such assumptions are made. We show how simple plausibility judgments on the maximum…

协变量驱动暴露与随访下连续暴露对有序结局的边际效应估计AI 解读

In the statistical literature, a number of methods have been proposed to ensure valid inference about marginal effects of variables on a longitudinal outcome in settings with irregular monitoring times. However, the potential biases due to covariate-driven monitoring times and confounding have rarely been considered simultaneously, and never in a setting with an ordinal outcome and a continuous exposure. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a methodology for causal…

时间序列极端事件中的因果关系AI 解读

Consider two stationary time series with heavy-tailed marginal distributions. We aim to detect whether they have a causal relation, that is, if a change in one causes a change in the other. Usual methods for causal discovery are not well suited if the causal mechanisms only appear during extreme events. We propose a framework to detect a causal structure from the extremes of time series, providing a new tool to extract causal information from extreme events. We introduce the…

跨地区外推随机试验的协变量平衡敏感性分析AI 解读

The ability to generalize experimental results from randomized control trials (RCTs) across locations is crucial for informing policy decisions in targeted regions. Such generalization is often hindered by the lack of identifiability due to unmeasured effect modifiers that compromise direct transport of treatment effect estimates from one location to another. We build upon sensitivity analysis in observational studies and propose an optimization procedure that allows us to…

合成设计：利用合成控制优化实验设计AI 解读

We investigate the optimal design of experimental studies that have pre-treatment outcome data available. The average treatment effect is estimated as the difference between the weighted average outcomes of the treated and control units. A number of commonly used approaches fit this formulation, including the difference-in-means estimator and a variety of synthetic-control techniques. We propose several methods for choosing the set of treated units in conjunction with the…

基于最近邻匹配的估计：从密度比到平均处理效应AI 解读

Nearest neighbor (NN) matching as a tool to align data sampled from different groups is both conceptually natural and practically well-used. In a landmark paper, Abadie and Imbens (2006) provided the first large-sample analysis of NN matching under, however, a crucial assumption that the number of NNs, $M$, is fixed. This manuscript reveals something new out of their study and shows that, once allowing $M$ to diverge with the sample size, an intrinsic statistic in their…

包含协变量时的工具变量有效性检验AI 解读

We develop a novel test of the instrumental variable identifying assumptions for heterogeneous treatment effect models with conditioning covariates. We assume semiparametric dependence between potential outcomes and conditioning covariates. This allows us to obtain testable equality and inequality restrictions among the subdensities of estimable partial residuals. We propose jointly testing these restrictions. To improve power, we introduce distillation, where a trimmed…

共同相关效应模型的简便替代方法AI 解读

We study estimation of factor models in a fixed-T panel data setting and significantly relax the common correlated effects (CCE) assumptions pioneered by Pesaran (2006) and used in dozens of papers since. In the simplest case, we model the unobserved factors as functions of the cross-sectional averages of the explanatory variables and show that this is implied by Pesaran's assumptions when the number of factors does not exceed the number of explanatory variables. Our…

基于贝叶斯加性回归树的密度回归AI 解读

Flexibly modeling how an entire density changes with covariates is an important but challenging generalization of mean and quantile regression. While existing methods for density regression primarily consist of covariate-dependent discrete mixture models, we consider a continuous latent variable model in general covariate spaces, which we call DR-BART. The prior mapping the latent variable to the observed data is constructed via a novel application of Bayesian Additive…

个体处理效应的共形敏感性分析AI 解读

Estimating an individual treatment effect (ITE) is essential to personalized decision making. However, existing methods for estimating the ITE often rely on unconfoundedness, an assumption that is fundamentally untestable with observed data. To assess the robustness of individual-level causal conclusion with unconfoundedness, this paper proposes a method for sensitivity analysis of the ITE, a way to estimate a range of the ITE under unobserved confounding. The method we…

使用目标最大似然估计因果效应时如何处理缺失数据AI 解读

Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation (TMLE) is increasingly used for doubly robust causal inference, but how missing data should be handled when using TMLE with data-adaptive approaches is unclear. Based on the Victorian Adolescent Health Cohort Study, we conducted a simulation study to evaluate eight missing data methods in this context: complete-case analysis, extended TMLE incorporating outcome-missingness model, missing covariate missing indicator method, five multiple…

嵌套非参数工具变量回归AI 解读

Several causal parameters in short panel data models are functionals of a nested nonparametric instrumental variable regression (nested NPIV). Recent examples include mediated, time varying, and long term treatment effects identified using proxy variables. In econometrics, examples arise in triangular simultaneous equations and hedonic price systems. However, it appears that explicit mean square convergence rates for nested NPIV are unknown, preventing inference on some of…

利用深度神经网络进行不依赖维数的平均处理效应推断AI 解读

This paper investigates the estimation and inference of the average treatment effect (ATE) using deep neural networks (DNNs) in the potential outcomes framework. Under some regularity conditions, the observed response can be formulated as the response of a mean regression problem with both the confounding variables and the treatment indicator as the independent variables. Using such formulation, we investigate two methods for ATE estimation and inference based on the…

依赖观测处理过程的干预分布与因果生存分析中的模型双重稳健性AI 解读

The generalized g-formula can be used to estimate the probability of survival under a sustained treatment strategy. When treatment strategies are deterministic, estimators derived from the so-called efficient influence function (EIF) for the g-formula will be doubly robust to model misspecification. In recent years, several practical applications have motivated estimation of the g-formula under non-deterministic treatment strategies where treatment assignment at each time…

多处理臂及析因实验中的协变量调整AI 解读

Randomized experiments are the gold standard for causal inference, and justify simple comparisons across treatment groups. Regression adjustment provides a convenient way to incorporate covariate information for additional efficiency. This article provides a unified account of its utility for improving estimation efficiency in multi-armed experiments. We start with the commonly used additive and fully interacted models for regression adjustment, and clarify the trade-offs…

学校选择中的非参数处理效应识别AI 解读

This paper studies nonparametric identification and estimation of causal effects in centralized school assignment. In many centralized assignment algorithms, students face both lottery-driven variation and regression discontinuity- (RD) driven variation. We characterize the full set of identified atomic treatment effects (aTEs), defined as the conditional average treatment effect between a pair of schools given student characteristics. Atomic treatment effects are the…

干扰与复杂实验设计下的优化方差估计AI 解读

Unbiased and consistent variance estimators generally do not exist for design-based treatment effect estimators because experimenters never observe more than one potential outcome for any unit. The problem is exacerbated by interference and complex experimental designs. Experimenters must accept conservative variance estimators in these settings, but they can strive to minimize the conservativeness. In this paper, we show that the task of constructing a minimally…

面向敏感学生数据的稳健差分隐私随机实验AI 解读

Randomized control trials (RCTs) have been the gold standard to evaluate the effectiveness of a program, policy, or treatment on an outcome of interest. However, many RCTs assume that study participants are willing to share their (potentially sensitive) data, specifically their response to treatment. This assumption, while trivial at first, is becoming difficult to satisfy in the modern era, especially in online settings where there are more regulations to protect…

兼容二元与连续处理的平均因果效应广义定义AI 解读

One of the main tasks of causal inference is estimating well-defined causal parameters. One of the main causal parameters is the average causal effect (ACE) - the expected value of the individual level causal effects in the target population. For binary treatments, the individual level causal effect is defined as contrast between potential outcomes. For continuous outcomes, however, there are many such contrasts in finite samples, thus hampering their use as a useful summary…

以贝叶斯证据综合纳入真实世界证据评估替代终点AI 解读

Objective: Traditionally validation of surrogate endpoints has been carried out using RCT data. However, RCT data may be too limited to validate surrogate endpoints. In this paper, we sought to improve validation of surrogate endpoints with the inclusion of real world evidence (RWE). Study Design and Setting: We use data from comparative RWE (cRWE) and single arm RWE (sRWE), to supplement RCT evidence for evaluation of progression free survival (PFS) as a surrogate endpoint…