每日简报

不依赖评分等价性的基于排序的结构学习AI 解读

We propose an empirical Bayes formulation of the structure learning problem, where the prior specification assumes that all node variables have the same error variance, an assumption known to ensure the identifiability of the underlying causal directed acyclic graph (DAG). To facilitate efficient posterior computation, we approximate the posterior probability of each ordering by that of a best DAG model, which naturally leads to an order-based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)…

观察数据中暴露对计数结果的效应：以被监禁女性为例AI 解读

Causal inference methods can be applied to estimate the effect of a point exposure or treatment on an outcome of interest using data from observational studies. For example, in the Women's Interagency HIV Study, it is of interest to understand the effects of incarceration on the number of sexual partners and the number of cigarettes smoked after incarceration. In settings like this where the outcome is a count, the estimand is often the causal mean ratio, i.e., the ratio of…

时间或空间依赖实验中的策略评估AI 解读

The aim of this paper is to establish a causal link between the policies implemented by technology companies and the outcomes they yield within intricate temporal and/or spatial dependent experiments. We propose a novel temporal/spatio-temporal Varying Coefficient Decision Process (VCDP) model, capable of effectively capturing the evolving treatment effects in situations characterized by temporal and/or spatial dependence. Our methodology encompasses the decomposition of the…

二元暴露状态下连续暴露的条件广义倾向评分空间匹配AI 解读

Propensity score (PS) matching to estimate causal effects of exposure is biased when unmeasured spatial confounding exists. Some exposures are continuous yet dependent on a binary variable (e.g., level of a contaminant (continuous) within a specified radius from residence (binary)). Further, unmeasured spatial confounding may vary by spatial patterns for both continuous and binary attributes of exposure. We propose a new generalized propensity score (GPS) matching method for…

动态异质分布回归面板模型及劳动收入应用AI 解读

We introduce a dynamic distribution regression panel data model with heterogeneous coefficients across units. The objects of primary interest are functionals of these coefficients, including predicted one-step-ahead and stationary cross-sectional distributions of the outcome variable. Coefficients and their functionals are estimated via fixed effect methods. We investigate how these functionals vary in response to counterfactual changes in initial conditions or covariate…

干中学：结合因果、控制与强化学习操控动态系统AI 解读

Questions in causality, control, and reinforcement learning go beyond the classical machine learning task of prediction under i.i.d. observations. Instead, these fields consider the problem of learning how to actively perturb a system to achieve a certain effect on a response variable. Arguably, they have complementary views on the problem: In control, one usually aims to first identify the system by excitation strategies to then apply model-based design techniques to…

中位数最优处理规则AI 解读

Optimal treatment regimes are personalized policies for making a treatment decision based on subject characteristics, with the policy chosen to maximize some value. It is common to aim to maximize the mean outcome in the population, via a regime assigning treatment only to those whose mean outcome is higher under treatment versus control. However, the mean can be an unstable measure of centrality, resulting in imprecise statistical procedures, as well as unrobust decisions…

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…

新处理长期效应的估计AI 解读

Policy makers typically face the problem of wanting to estimate the long-term effects of novel treatments, while only having historical data of older treatment options. We assume access to a long-term dataset where only past treatments were administered and a short-term dataset where novel treatments have been administered. We propose a surrogate based approach where we assume that the long-term effect is channeled through a multitude of available short-term proxies. Our…

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…

存在未观测混杂时的序贯去混杂因果推断AI 解读

Using observational data to estimate the effect of a treatment is a powerful tool for decision-making when randomized experiments are infeasible or costly. However, observational data often yields biased estimates of treatment effects, since treatment assignment can be confounded by unobserved variables. A remedy is offered by deconfounding methods that adjust for such unobserved confounders. In this paper, we develop the Sequential Deconfounder, a method that enables…

因果面板模型的双重稳健识别AI 解读

We study identification and estimation of causal effects in settings with panel data. Traditionally researchers follow model-based identification strategies relying on assumptions governing the relation between the potential outcomes and the observed and unobserved confounders. We focus on a different, complementary approach to identification where assumptions are made about the connection between the treatment assignment and the unobserved confounders. Such strategies are…

未测混杂的简明且锐利的敏感性分析AI 解读

We present a method for assessing the sensitivity of the true causal effect to unmeasured confounding. The method requires the analyst to set two intuitive parameters. Otherwise, the method is assumption-free. The method returns an interval that contains the true causal effect, and whose bounds are arbitrarily sharp, i.e. practically attainable. We show experimentally that our bounds can be tighter than those obtained by the method of Ding and VanderWeele (2016a) which,…

广告竞价节流与在线广告效果的因果推断AI 解读

Causally identifying the effect of digital advertising is challenging, because experimentation is expensive, and observational data lacks random variation. This paper identifies a pervasive source of naturally occurring, quasi-experimental variation in user-level ad-exposure in digital advertising campaigns. It shows how this variation can be utilized by ad-publishers to identify the causal effect of advertising campaigns. The variation pertains to auction throttling, a…

利用高斯过程先验处理因果效应估计中的正值性违反AI 解读

In observational studies, causal inference relies on several key identifying assumptions. One identifiability condition is the positivity assumption, which requires the probability of treatment be bounded away from 0 and 1. That is, for every covariate combination, it should be possible to observe both treated and control subjects, i.e., the covariate distributions should overlap between treatment arms. If the positivity assumption is violated, population-level causal…

清晰与模糊断点及折点设计中的层级高斯过程模型AI 解读

We propose nonparametric Bayesian estimators for causal inference exploiting Regression Discontinuity/Kink (RD/RK) under sharp and fuzzy designs. Our estimators are based on Gaussian Process (GP) regression and classification. The GP methods are powerful probabilistic machine learning approaches that are advantageous in terms of derivative estimation and uncertainty quantification, facilitating RK estimation and inference of RD/RK models. These estimators are extended to…

少量时期下交互固定效应模型的处理效应AI 解读

This paper considers identifying and estimating the Average Treatment Effect on the Treated (ATT) when untreated potential outcomes are generated by an interactive fixed effects model. That is, in addition to time-period and individual fixed effects, we consider the case where there is an unobserved time invariant variable whose effect on untreated potential outcomes may change over time and which can therefore cause outcomes (in the absence of participating in the…

社会网络的多层纵向分析AI 解读

Stochastic actor-oriented models (SAOM) are a broadly applied modelling framework for analysing network dynamics using network panel data. They have been extended to address co-evolution of multiple networks as well as networks and behaviour. This paper extends the SAOM to the analysis of multiple network panels through a random coefficient multilevel model, estimated with a Bayesian approach. This is illustrated by a study of the dynamic interdependence of friendship and…

纳入基线协变量验证对照组生物标志物恒定的替代终点AI 解读

A surrogate endpoint S in a clinical trial is an outcome that may be measured earlier or more easily than the true outcome of interest T. In this work, we extend causal inference approaches to validate such a surrogate using potential outcomes. The causal association paradigm assesses the relationship of the treatment effect on the surrogate with the treatment effect on the true endpoint. Using the principal surrogacy criteria, we utilize the joint conditional distribution…

工具变量分位数回归的第一阶段表示AI 解读

This paper develops a first-stage linear regression representation for the instrumental variables (IV) quantile regression (QR) model. The quantile first-stage is analogous to the least squares case, i.e., a linear projection of the endogenous variables on the instruments and other exogenous covariates, with the difference that the QR case is a weighted projection. The weights are given by the conditional density function of the innovation term in the QR structural model,…

高维面板中缺失值与协方差的因子插补AI 解读

Economists are blessed with a wealth of data for analysis, but more often than not, values in some entries of the data matrix are missing. Various methods have been proposed to handle missing observations in a few variables. We exploit the factor structure in panel data of large dimensions. Our \textsc{tall-project} algorithm first estimates the factors from a \textsc{tall} block in which data for all rows are observed, and projections of variable specific length are then…

断点回归设计AI 解读

The Regression Discontinuity (RD) design is one of the most widely used non-experimental methods for causal inference and program evaluation. Over the last two decades, statistical and econometric methods for RD analysis have expanded and matured, and there is now a large number of methodological results for RD identification, estimation, inference, and validation. We offer a curated review of this methodological literature organized around the two most popular frameworks…