每日简报

岭正则化的刀切 Anderson–Rubin 检验AI 解读

We consider hypothesis testing in instrumental variable regression models with few included exogenous covariates but many instruments -- possibly more than the number of observations. We show that a ridge-regularised version of the jackknifed Anderson Rubin (1949, henceforth AR) test controls asymptotic size in the presence of heteroskedasticity, and when the instruments may be arbitrarily weak. Asymptotic size control is established under weaker assumptions than those…

协变量自适应最小化随机分配下分层不平衡协方差的一致估计AI 解读

Pocock and Simon's minimization method is a popular approach for covariate-adaptive randomization in clinical trials. Valid statistical inference with data collected under the minimization method requires the knowledge of the limiting covariance matrix of within-stratum imbalances, whose existence is only recently established. In this work, we propose a bootstrap-based estimator for this limit and establish its consistency, in particular, by Le Cam's third lemma. As an…

多维不可观测异质性下的处理效应：边际处理效应识别AI 解读

This paper establishes sufficient conditions for the identification of the marginal treatment effects with multivalued treatments. Our model is based on a multinomial choice model with utility maximization. Our MTE generalizes the MTE defined in Heckman and Vytlacil (2005) in binary treatment models. As in the binary case, we can interpret the MTE as the treatment effect for persons who are indifferent between two treatments at a particular level. Our MTE enables one to…

变分因果推断AI 解读

Estimating an individual's potential outcomes under counterfactual treatments is a challenging task for traditional causal inference and supervised learning approaches when the outcome is high-dimensional (e.g. gene expressions, impulse responses, human faces) and covariates are relatively limited. In this case, to construct one's outcome under a counterfactual treatment, it is crucial to leverage individual information contained in its observed factual outcome on top of the…

多维网络的动态随机区块模型AI 解读

The availability of relational data can offer new insights into the functioning of the economy. Nevertheless, modeling the dynamics in network data with multiple types of relationships is still a challenging issue. Stochastic block models provide a parsimonious and flexible approach to network analysis. We propose a new stochastic block model for multidimensional networks, where layer-specific hidden Markov-chain processes drive the changes in community formation. The…

人机交互的助益：混杂环境中的超级强化学习AI 解读

As AI becomes more prevalent throughout society, effective methods of integrating humans and AI systems that leverage their respective strengths and mitigate risk have become an important priority. In this paper, we introduce the paradigm of super policy learning that takes advantage of Human-AI interaction for data driven sequential decision making. This approach utilizes the observed action, either from AI or humans, as input for achieving a stronger oracle in policy…

通过交叉验证一致选择面板模型的分组数量AI 解读

Group number selection is a key problem for group panel data modeling. In this work, we develop a cross-validation (CV) method to tackle this problem. Specifically, we split the panel data into two data folds on the time span with a buffer zone, with group structure preserved for individuals. We first estimate the group memberships and parameters on one data fold, then plug in the estimates and utilize the other data fold to evaluate a designed criterion. Subsequently, the…

利用独立工具变量实现识别与分布泛化AI 解读

Instrumental variable models allow us to identify a causal function between covariates $X$ and a response $Y$, even in the presence of unobserved confounding. Most of the existing estimators assume that the error term in the response $Y$ and the hidden confounders are uncorrelated with the instruments $Z$. This is often motivated by a graphical separation, an argument that also justifies independence. Positing an independence restriction, however, leads to strictly stronger…

网络结构未知时随机实验的总体处理效应估计AI 解读

Randomized experiments are widely used to estimate the causal effects of a proposed treatment in many areas of science, from medicine and healthcare to the physical and biological sciences, from the social sciences to engineering, to public policy and to the technology industry at large. Here, we consider situations where classical methods for estimating the total treatment effect on a target population are considerably biased due to confounding network effects, i.e., 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…

协变量自适应随机化下分位数处理效应的回归调整估计AI 解读

Datasets from field experiments with covariate-adaptive randomizations (CARs) usually contain extra covariates in addition to the strata indicators. We propose to incorporate these additional covariates via auxiliary regressions in the estimation and inference of unconditional quantile treatment effects (QTEs) under CARs. We establish the consistency and limit distribution of the regression-adjusted QTE estimator and prove that the use of multiplier bootstrap inference is…

可微分的不变因果发现AI 解读

Learning causal structure from observational data is a fundamental challenge in machine learning. However, the majority of commonly used differentiable causal discovery methods are non-identifiable, turning this problem into a continuous optimization task prone to data biases. In many real-life situations, data is collected from different environments, in which the functional relations remain consistent across environments, while the distribution of additive noises may vary.…

重审倾向得分的核心作用：连接因果机器学习中的平衡与效率AI 解读

About forty years ago, in a now--seminal contribution, Rosenbaum & Rubin (1983) introduced a critical characterization of the propensity score as a central quantity for drawing causal inferences in observational study settings. In the decades since, much progress has been made across several research fronts in causal inference, notably including the re-weighting and matching paradigms. Focusing on the former and specifically on its intersection with machine learning and…

f 敏感性模型下的敏感性分析：分布稳健视角AI 解读

This paper introduces the $f$-sensitivity model, a new sensitivity model that characterizes the violation of unconfoundedness in causal inference. It assumes the selection bias due to unmeasured confounding is bounded "on average"; compared with the widely used point-wise sensitivity models in the literature, it is able to capture the strength of unmeasured confounding by not only its magnitude but also the chance of encountering such a magnitude. We propose a framework for…

贪婪因果发现的几何结构AI 解读

Finding a directed acyclic graph (DAG) that best encodes the conditional independence statements observable from data is a central question within causality. Algorithms that greedily transform one candidate DAG into another given a fixed set of moves have been particularly successful, for example the GES, GIES, and MMHC algorithms. In 2010, Studený, Hemmecke and Lindner introduced the characteristic imset polytope, $\operatorname{CIM}_p$, whose vertices correspond to Markov…

仅凭试验报告的二元亚组分析，部分识别个体化治疗反应AI 解读

Medical journals have adhered to a reporting practice that seriously limits the usefulness of published trial findings. Medical decision makers commonly observe many patient covariates and seek to use this information to personalize treatment choices. Yet standard summaries of trial findings only partition subjects into broad subgroups, typically into binary categories. Given this reporting practice, we study the problem of inference on long mean treatment outcomes…

结合基尼系数与角度衡量经济离散程度AI 解读

Classical measures of inequality use the mean as the benchmark of economic dispersion. They are not sensitive to inequality at the left tail of the distribution, where it would matter most. This paper presents a new inequality measurement tool that gives more weight to inequality at the lower end of the distribution, it is based on the comparison of all value pairs and synthesizes the dispersion of the whole distribution. The differences that sum to the Gini coefficient are…

将洛伦兹曲线的不对称性纳入经济不平等指标AI 解读

The Gini index signals only the dispersion of the distribution and is not very sensitive to income differences at the tails of the distribution. The widely used index of inequality can be adjusted to also measure distributional asymmetry by attaching weights to the distances between the Lorenz curve and the 45-degree line. The measure is equivalent to the Gini if the distribution is symmetric. The alternative measure of inequality inherits good properties from the Gini but…

空间干扰下收敛速率最优的整群随机设计AI 解读

We consider a potential outcomes model in which interference may be present between any two units but the extent of interference diminishes with spatial distance. The causal estimand is the global average treatment effect, which compares outcomes under the counterfactuals that all or no units are treated. We study a class of designs in which space is partitioned into clusters that are randomized into treatment and control. For each design, we estimate the treatment effect…

工具变量化的共同混杂AI 解读

Causal inference is difficult in the presence of unobserved confounders. We introduce the instrumented common confounding (ICC) approach to (nonparametrically) identify causal effects with instruments, which are exogenous only conditional on some unobserved common confounders. The ICC approach is most useful in rich observational data with multiple sources of unobserved confounding, where instruments are at most exogenous conditional on some unobserved common confounders.…

药物相互作用的稳健因果推断AI 解读

There is growing interest in developing causal inference methods for multi-valued treatments with a focus on pairwise average treatment effects. Here we focus on a clinically important, yet less-studied estimand: causal drug-drug interactions (DDIs), which quantifies the degree to which the causal effect of drug A is altered by the presence versus the absence of drug B. Confounding adjustment when studying the effects of DDIs can be accomplished via inverse probability of…

死亡截断问题的匹配方法AI 解读

Even in a carefully designed randomized trial, outcomes for some study participants can be missing, or more precisely, ill-defined, because participants had died prior to date of outcome collection. This problem, known as truncation by death, means that the treated and untreated are no longer balanced with respect to covariates determining survival. Therefore, researchers often utilize principal stratification and focus on the Survivor Average Causal Effect (SACE). The SACE…

处理开放标签随机对照试验中治疗转换的稳健工具变量方法AI 解读

In a randomized controlled trial, treatment switching (also called contamination or crossover) occurs when a patient initially assigned to one treatment arm changes to another arm during the course of follow-up. Overlooking treatment switching might substantially bias the evaluation of treatment efficacy or safety. To account for treatment switching, instrumental variable (IV) methods by leveraging the initial randomized assignment as an IV serve as natural adjustment…

通过重要性加权从条件矩限制学习因果模型AI 解读

We consider learning causal relationships under conditional moment restrictions. Unlike causal inference under unconditional moment restrictions, conditional moment restrictions pose serious challenges for causal inference, especially in high-dimensional settings. To address this issue, we propose a method that transforms conditional moment restrictions to unconditional moment restrictions through importance weighting, using a conditional density ratio estimator. Using this…