每日简报

用于政策评估的双重差分法AI 解读

Difference-in-differences is one of the most used identification strategies in empirical work in economics. This chapter reviews a number of important, recent developments related to difference-in-differences. First, this chapter reviews recent work pointing out limitations of two way fixed effects regressions (these are panel data regressions that have been the dominant approach to implementing difference-in-differences identification strategies) that arise in empirically…

GAM(L)A：用于可解释机器学习的计量模型AI 解读

Despite their high predictive performance, random forest and gradient boosting are often considered as black boxes or uninterpretable models which has raised concerns from practitioners and regulators. As an alternative, we propose in this paper to use partial linear models that are inherently interpretable. Specifically, this article introduces GAM-lasso (GAMLA) and GAM-autometrics (GAMA), denoted as GAM(L)A in short. GAM(L)A combines parametric and non-parametric functions…

异质性处理效应的校准误差AI 解读

Recently, many researchers have advanced data-driven methods for modeling heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs). Even still, estimation of HTEs is a difficult task -- these methods frequently over- or under-estimate the treatment effects, leading to poor calibration of the resulting models. However, while many methods exist for evaluating the calibration of prediction and classification models, formal approaches to assess the calibration of HTE models are limited to the…

广义因果森林：在线市场中的异质性处理效应估计AI 解读

Uplift modeling is a rapidly growing approach that utilizes causal inference and machine learning methods to directly estimate the heterogeneous treatment effects, which has been widely applied to various online marketplaces to assist large-scale decision-making in recent years. The existing popular models, like causal forest (CF), are limited to either discrete treatments or posing parametric assumptions on the outcome-treatment relationship that may suffer model…

收入增长中可能不存在的总体矩AI 解读

The literature often employs moment-based earnings risk measures like variance, skewness, and kurtosis. However, under heavy-tailed distributions, these moments may not exist in the population. Our empirical analysis reveals that population kurtosis, skewness, and variance often do not exist for the conditional distribution of earnings growth. This challenges moment-based analyses. We propose robust conditional Pareto exponents as novel earnings risk measures, developing…

算法辅助人类决策的最优策略AI 解读

We consider optimal regimes for algorithm-assisted human decision-making. Such regimes are decision functions of measured pre-treatment variables and, by leveraging natural treatment values, enjoy a "superoptimality" property whereby they are guaranteed to outperform conventional optimal regimes. When there is unmeasured confounding, the benefit of using superoptimal regimes can be considerable. When there is no unmeasured confounding, superoptimal regimes are identical to…

随机实验中通用机器学习发现的异质性处理效应：统计推断AI 解读

Researchers are increasingly turning to machine learning (ML) algorithms to investigate causal heterogeneity in randomized experiments. Despite their promise, ML algorithms may fail to accurately ascertain heterogeneous treatment effects under practical settings with many covariates and small sample size. In addition, the quantification of estimation uncertainty remains a challenge. We develop a general approach to statistical inference for heterogeneous treatment effects…

利用工具变量时间序列识别因果效应：辅助变量与历史依赖调整AI 解读

Instrumental variable (IV) regression relies on instruments to infer causal effects from observational data with unobserved confounding. We consider IV regression in time series models, such as vector auto-regressive (VAR) processes. Direct applications of i.i.d. techniques are generally inconsistent as they do not correctly adjust for dependencies in the past. In this paper, we outline the difficulties that arise due to time structure and propose methodology for…

折点阈值估计与连续性检验的极小极大风险AI 解读

We derive a risk lower bound in estimating the threshold parameter without knowing whether the threshold regression model is continuous or not. The bound goes to zero as the sample size $ n $ grows only at the cube root rate. Motivated by this finding, we develop a continuity test for the threshold regression model and a bootstrap to compute its \textit{p}-values. The validity of the bootstrap is established, and its finite sample property is explored through Monte Carlo…

潜在干预下的可微因果发现AI 解读

Recent work has shown promising results in causal discovery by leveraging interventional data with gradient-based methods, even when the intervened variables are unknown. However, previous work assumes that the correspondence between samples and interventions is known, which is often unrealistic. We envision a scenario with an extensive dataset sampled from multiple intervention distributions and one observation distribution, but where we do not know which distribution…

高维非平稳时间序列的序贯高斯近似AI 解读

Gaussian couplings of partial sum processes are derived for the high-dimensional regime $d=o(n^{1/3})$. The coupling is derived for sums of independent random vectors and subsequently extended to nonstationary time series. Our inequalities depend explicitly on the dimension and on a measure of nonstationarity, and are thus also applicable to arrays of random vectors. To enable high-dimensional statistical inference, a feasible Gaussian approximation scheme is proposed.…

篮式试验中处理效应估计的多任务对抗学习AI 解读

Estimating treatment effects from observational data provides insights about causality guiding many real-world applications such as different clinical study designs, which are the formulations of trials, experiments, and observational studies in medical, clinical, and other types of research. In this paper, we describe causal inference for application in a novel clinical design called basket trial that tests how well a new drug works in patients who have different types of…

随机过程的组合视角：白噪声AI 解读

White noise is a fundamental and fairly well understood stochastic process that conforms the conceptual basis for many other processes, as well as for the modeling of time series. Here we push a fresh perspective toward white noise that, grounded on combinatorial considerations, contributes to give new interesting insights both for modelling and theoretical purposes. To this aim, we incorporate the ordinal pattern analysis approach which allows us to abstract a time series…

通过高效数据聚合估计处理效应AI 解读

Data aggregation, also known as meta analysis, is widely used to combine knowledge on parameters shared in common (e.g., average treatment effect) between multiple studies. In this paper, we introduce an attractive data aggregation scheme that pools summary statistics from various existing studies. Our scheme informs the design of new validation studies and yields us unbiased estimators for the shared parameters. In our setup, each existing study applies a LASSO regression…

北极海冰何时消失？面积、范围、厚度与体积的联合预测AI 解读

Rapidly diminishing Arctic summer sea ice is a strong signal of the pace of global climate change. We provide point, interval, and density forecasts for four measures of Arctic sea ice: area, extent, thickness, and volume. Importantly, we enforce the joint constraint that these measures must simultaneously arrive at an ice-free Arctic. We apply this constrained joint forecast procedure to models relating sea ice to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and models relating…

对弱工具变量或无效工具变量的稳健性：利用机器学习探索非线性治疗模型AI 解读

We discuss causal inference for observational studies with possibly invalid instrumental variables. We propose a novel methodology called two-stage curvature identification (TSCI) by exploring the nonlinear treatment model with machine learning. {The first-stage machine learning enables improving the instrumental variable's strength and adjusting for different forms of violating the instrumental variable assumptions.} The success of TSCI requires the instrumental variable's…

利用变化中的变化方法纠正样本流失偏差AI 解读

Attrition is a common and potentially important threat to internal validity in treatment effect studies. We extend the changes-in-changes approach to identify the average treatment effect for respondents and the entire study population in the presence of attrition. Our method, which exploits baseline outcome data, can be applied to randomized experiments as well as quasi-experimental difference-in-difference designs. A formal comparison highlights that while widely used…

以噪声对抗噪声：大量候选工具变量下的因果推断AI 解读

Instrumental variable methods provide useful tools for inferring causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding. To apply these methods with large-scale data sets, a major challenge is to find valid instruments from a possibly large candidate set. In practice, most of the candidate instruments are often not relevant for studying a particular exposure of interest. Moreover, not all relevant candidate instruments are valid as they may directly influence the outcome…

潜在因子回归与稀疏回归是否充分？AI 解读

We propose the Factor Augmented sparse linear Regression Model (FARM) that not only encompasses both the latent factor regression and sparse linear regression as special cases but also bridges dimension reduction and sparse regression together. We provide theoretical guarantees for the estimation of our model under the existence of sub-Gaussian and heavy-tailed noises (with bounded (1+x)-th moment, for all x>0), respectively. In addition, the existing works on supervised…

噪声尾部如何影响深度 ReLU 网络？AI 解读

This paper investigates the stability of deep ReLU neural networks for nonparametric regression under the assumption that the noise has only a finite p-th moment. We unveil how the optimal rate of convergence depends on p, the degree of smoothness and the intrinsic dimension in a class of nonparametric regression functions with hierarchical composition structure when both the adaptive Huber loss and deep ReLU neural networks are used. This optimal rate of convergence cannot…

借助异质性处理效应估计器构建灵活高效的情境老虎机算法AI 解读

Contextual bandit algorithms often estimate reward models to inform decision-making. However, true rewards can contain action-independent redundancies that are not relevant for decision-making. We show it is more data-efficient to estimate any function that explains the reward differences between actions, that is, the treatment effects. Motivated by this observation, building on recent work on oracle-based bandit algorithms, we provide the first reduction of contextual…

利用工具变量识别稀疏因果效应AI 解读

Exogenous heterogeneity, for example, in the form of instrumental variables can help us learn a system's underlying causal structure and predict the outcome of unseen intervention experiments. In this paper, we consider linear models in which the causal effect from covariates $X$ on a response $Y$ is sparse. We provide conditions under which the causal coefficient becomes identifiable from the observed distribution. These conditions can be satisfied even if the number of…

含固定效应的非线性网络数据模型的刀切法偏差校正AI 解读

I introduce a new method for bias correction of dyadic models with agent-specific fixed effects, including the dyadic link formation model with homophily and degree heterogeneity. The proposed approach uses a jackknife procedure to deal with the incidental parameters problem. The method can be applied to both directed and undirected networks, allows for non-binary outcome variables, and can be used to bias correct estimates of average effects and counterfactual outcomes. I…

动态处理效应与一般嵌套泛函的自动去偏机器学习AI 解读

Many canonical models in causal inference and structural econometrics have recursive identification formulas. In causal inference, recursion arises when identification requires both pre- and post-treatment covariates. For example, short-term surrogate outcomes are measured after the treatment, and serve as necessary covariates when identifying long-term effects. Post-treatment covariates are also required for identification of dynamic difference-in-differences designs,…