每日简报

未测混杂因果推断的双重有效与双重尖锐敏感性分析AI 解读

We consider the problem of constructing bounds on the average treatment effect (ATE) when unmeasured confounders exist but have bounded influence. Specifically, we assume that omitted confounders could not change the odds of treatment for any unit by more than a fixed factor. We derive the sharp partial identification bounds implied by this assumption by leveraging distributionally robust optimization, and we propose estimators of these bounds with several novel robustness…

面板数据平均治疗效应的稳健估计AI 解读

In order to evaluate the impact of a policy intervention on a group of units over time, it is important to correctly estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) measure. Due to lack of robustness of the existing procedures of estimating ATE from panel data, in this paper, we introduce a robust estimator of the ATE and the subsequent inference procedures using the popular approach of minimum density power divergence inference. Asymptotic properties of the proposed ATE…

利用零效应降低单侧触发实验中的估计方差AI 解读

In online experiments where the intervention is only exposed, or "triggered", for a small subset of the population, it is critical to use variance reduction techniques to estimate treatment effects with sufficient precision to inform business decisions. Trigger-dilute analysis is often used in these situations, and reduces the sampling variance of overall intent-to-treat (ITT) effects by an order of magnitude equal to the inverse of the triggering rate; for example, a…

模糊动态治疗方案：强化学习方法AI 解读

A main research goal in various studies is to use an observational data set and provide a new set of counterfactual guidelines that can yield causal improvements. Dynamic Treatment Regimes (DTRs) are widely studied to formalize this process. However, available methods in finding optimal DTRs often rely on assumptions that are violated in real-world applications (e.g., medical decision-making or public policy), especially when (a) the existence of unobserved confounders…

含潜在混杂的时间序列因果祖先图刻画AI 解读

In this paper, we introduce a novel class of graphical models for representing time lag specific causal relationships and independencies of multivariate time series with unobserved confounders. We completely characterize these graphs and show that they constitute proper subsets of the currently employed model classes. As we show, from the novel graphs one can thus draw stronger causal inferences -- without additional assumptions. We further introduce a graphical…

基于对照组插补的纵向缺失数据多重稳健估计AI 解读

Longitudinal studies are often subject to missing data. The ICH E9(R1) addendum addresses the importance of defining a treatment effect estimand with the consideration of intercurrent events. Jump-to-reference (J2R) is one classically envisioned control-based scenario for the treatment effect evaluation using the hypothetical strategy, where the participants in the treatment group after intercurrent events are assumed to have the same disease progress as those with identical…

利用多重先验强化随机对照试验并学习外部有效性AI 解读

This paper introduces a framework for incorporating prior information into the design of sequential experiments. These sources may include past experiments, expert opinions, or the experimenter's intuition. We model the problem using a multi-prior Bayesian approach, mapping each source to a Bayesian model and aggregating them based on posterior probabilities. Policies are evaluated on three criteria: learning the parameters of payoff distributions, the probability of…

通过敏感性曲线实现再中心化影响函数回归AI 解读

This paper proposes an empirical method to implement the recentered influence function (RIF) regression of Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009), a relevant method to study the effect of covariates on many statistics beyond the mean. In empirically relevant situations where the influence function is not available or difficult to compute, we suggest to use the \emph{sensitivity curve} (Tukey, 1977) as a feasible alternative. This may be computationally cumbersome when the sample…

理解基于有效影响函数的统计学习AI 解读

Evaluation of treatment effects and more general estimands is typically achieved via parametric modelling, which is unsatisfactory since model misspecification is likely. Data-adaptive model building (e.g. statistical/machine learning) is commonly employed to reduce the risk of misspecification. Naive use of such methods, however, delivers estimators whose bias may shrink too slowly with sample size for inferential methods to perform well, including those based on the…

DoubleML：双重机器学习的 Python 面向对象实现AI 解读

DoubleML is an open-source Python library implementing the double machine learning framework of Chernozhukov et al. (2018) for a variety of causal models. It contains functionalities for valid statistical inference on causal parameters when the estimation of nuisance parameters is based on machine learning methods. The object-oriented implementation of DoubleML provides a high flexibility in terms of model specifications and makes it easily extendable. The package is…

析因实验的回归因果推断：目标量、模型设定与设计性质AI 解读

Factorial designs are widely used due to their ability to accommodate multiple factors simultaneously. The factor-based regression with main effects and some interactions is the dominant strategy for downstream data analysis, delivering point estimators and standard errors via one single regression. Justification of these convenient estimators from the design-based perspective requires quantifying their sampling properties under the assignment mechanism conditioning on the…

线性暴露—响应模型下双部图实验的设计与分析AI 解读

A bipartite experiment consists of one set of units being assigned treatments and another set of units for which we measure outcomes. The two sets of units are connected by a bipartite graph, governing how the treated units can affect the outcome units. In this paper, we consider estimation of the average total treatment effect in the bipartite experimental framework under a linear exposure-response model. We introduce the Exposure Reweighted Linear (ERL) estimator, and show…

利用伪观测进行生存结局的倾向得分加权分析AI 解读

Survival outcomes are common in comparative effectiveness studies and require unique handling because they are usually incompletely observed due to right-censoring. A ``once for all'' approach for causal inference with survival outcomes constructs pseudo-observations and allows standard methods such as propensity score weighting to proceed as if the outcomes are completely observed. For a general class of model-free causal estimands with survival outcomes on user-specified…

多结果变量处理效应的估计与可视化AI 解读

We consider a randomized controlled trial between two groups. The objective is to identify a population with characteristics such that the test therapy is more effective than the control therapy. Such a population is called a subgroup. This identification can be made by estimating the treatment effect and identifying interactions between treatments and covariates. To date, many methods have been proposed to identify subgroups for a single outcome. There are also multiple…

个体随机试验中协变量调整方法的规划指南AI 解读

Background: It has long been advised to account for baseline covariates in the analysis of confirmatory randomised trials, with the main statistical justifications being that this increases power and, when a randomisation scheme balanced covariates, permits a valid estimate of experimental error. There are various methods available to account for covariates but it is not clear how to choose among them. Methods: Taking the perspective of writing a statistical analysis plan,…

群组层面处理效应异质性下的时变因果效应调节评估AI 解读

The micro-randomized trial (MRT) is a sequential randomized experimental design to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of mobile health (mHealth) intervention components that may be delivered at hundreds or thousands of decision points. MRTs have motivated a new class of causal estimands, termed "causal excursion effects", for which semiparametric inference can be conducted via a weighted, centered least squares criterion (Boruvka et al., 2018). Existing methods assume…

因果中介分析：具有渐近有效推断的变量选择AI 解读

Researchers are often interested in learning not only the effect of treatments on outcomes, but also the pathways through which these effects operate. A mediator is a variable that is affected by treatment and subsequently affects outcome. Existing methods for penalized mediation analyses may lead to ignoring important mediators and either assume that finite-dimensional linear models are sufficient to remove confounding bias, or perform no confounding control at all. In…

二元结果的有限信息最大似然模型选择程序AI 解读

Unmeasured covariates constitute one of the important problems in causal inference. Even if there are some unmeasured covariates, some instrumental variable methods such as a two-stage residual inclusion (2SRI) estimator, or a limited-information maximum likelihood (LIML) estimator can obtain an unbiased estimate for causal effects despite there being nonlinear outcomes such as binary outcomes; however, it requires that we specify not only a correct outcome model but also a…

固定维与高维下由评分解释的非随机处理效应估计AI 解读

Non-randomized treatment effect models are widely used for the assessment of treatment effects in various fields and in particular social science disciplines like political science, psychometry, psychology. More specifically, these are situations where treatment is assigned to an individual based on some of their characteristics (e.g. scholarship is allocated based on merit or antihypertensive treatments are allocated based on blood pressure level) instead of being allocated…