每日简报

用于因果效应估计的序贯欠识别工具变量选择AI 解读

Instrumental variable (IV) methods are used to estimate causal effects in settings with unobserved confounding, where we cannot directly experiment on the treatment variable. Instruments are variables which only affect the outcome indirectly via the treatment variable(s). Most IV applications focus on low-dimensional treatments and crucially require at least as many instruments as treatments. This assumption is restrictive: in the natural sciences we often seek to infer…

可微分的多目标因果贝叶斯实验设计AI 解读

We introduce a gradient-based approach for the problem of Bayesian optimal experimental design to learn causal models in a batch setting -- a critical component for causal discovery from finite data where interventions can be costly or risky. Existing methods rely on greedy approximations to construct a batch of experiments while using black-box methods to optimize over a single target-state pair to intervene with. In this work, we completely dispose of the black-box…

因果提升与链接预测AI 解读

Existing causal models for link prediction assume an underlying set of inherent node factors -- an innate characteristic defined at the node's birth -- that governs the causal evolution of links in the graph. In some causal tasks, however, link formation is path-dependent: The outcome of link interventions depends on existing links. Unfortunately, these existing causal methods are not designed for path-dependent link formation, as the cascading functional dependencies…

对象值时间序列的序列独立性检验AI 解读

We propose a novel method for testing serial independence of object-valued time series in metric spaces, which is more general than Euclidean or Hilbert spaces. The proposed method is fully nonparametric, free of tuning parameters, and can capture all nonlinear pairwise dependence. The key concept used in this paper is the distance covariance in metric spaces, which is extended to auto distance covariance for object-valued time series. Furthermore, we propose a generalized…

面向大规模因果推断的协变量平衡方法AI 解读

With the modern software and online platforms to collect massive amount of data, there is an increasing demand of applying causal inference methods at large scale when randomized experimentation is not viable. Weighting methods that directly incorporate covariate balancing have recently gained popularity for estimating causal effects in observational studies. These methods reduce the manual efforts required by researchers to iterate between propensity score modeling and…

统计因果性的潜在结果与决策理论基础AI 解读

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Causal Inference, Philip Dawid has described a graphical causal model based on decision diagrams. This article describes how single-world intervention graphs (SWIGs) relate to these diagrams. In this way, a correspondence is established between Dawid's approach and those based on potential outcomes such as Robins' Finest Fully Randomized Causally Interpreted Structured Tree Graphs. In more detail, a reformulation of Dawid's…

非平稳高维 VAR 模型中的推断AI 解读

In this paper we construct an inferential procedure for Granger causality in high-dimensional non-stationary vector autoregressive (VAR) models. Our method does not require knowledge of the order of integration of the time series under consideration. We augment the VAR with at least as many lags as the suspected maximum order of integration, an approach which has been proven to be robust against the presence of unit roots in low dimensions. We prove that we can restrict the…

分位数预测最优性的检验AI 解读

Quantile forecasts made across multiple horizons have become an important output of many financial institutions, central banks and international organisations. This paper proposes misspecification tests for such quantile forecasts that assess optimality over a set of multiple forecast horizons and/or quantiles. The tests build on multiple Mincer-Zarnowitz quantile regressions cast in a moment equality framework. Our main test is for the null hypothesis of autocalibration, a…

众多候选预测变量下预测回归的样本外可预测性AI 解读

This paper is concerned with detecting the presence of out of sample predictability in linear predictive regressions with a potentially large set of candidate predictors. We propose a procedure based on out of sample MSE comparisons that is implemented in a pairwise manner using one predictor at a time and resulting in an aggregate test statistic that is standard normally distributed under the global null hypothesis of no linear predictability. Predictors can be highly…

最优因果滤波器有限截段的渐近行为AI 解读

We establish an $L_1$-bound between the coefficients of the optimal causal filter applied to the data-generating process and its finite sample approximation. Here, we assume that the data-generating process is a second-order stationary time series with either short or long memory autocovariances. To derive the $L_1$-bound, we first provide an exact expression for the coefficients of the causal filter and their approximations in terms of the absolute convergent series of the…

重新审视母亲教育对青少年学业的影响：网络观察研究中的双重稳健估计AI 解读

In many contexts, particularly when study subjects are adolescents, peer effects can invalidate typical statistical requirements in the data. For instance, it is plausible that a student's academic performance is influenced both by their own mother's educational level as well as that of their peers. Since the underlying social network is measured, the Add Health study provides a unique opportunity to examine the impact of maternal college education on adolescent school…

贝叶斯网络估计倾向得分时二元数据因果效应的检验AI 解读

This paper proposes a new statistical approach for assessing treatment effect using Bayesian Networks (BNs). The goal is to draw causal inferences from observational data with a binary outcome and discrete covariates. The BNs are here used to estimate the propensity score, which enables flexible modeling and ensures maximum likelihood properties, including asymptotic efficiency. %As a result, other available approaches cannot perform better. When the propensity score is…

交叉试验中的行为延续效应与功效权衡AI 解读

A crossover trial is an efficient trial design when there is no carry-over effect. To reduce the impact of the biological carry-over effect, a washout period is often designed. However, the carry-over effect remains an outstanding concern when a washout period is unethical or cannot sufficiently diminish the impact of the carry-over effect. The latter can occur in comparative effectiveness research where the carry-over effect is often non-biological but behavioral. In this…

单代理混杂控制AI 解读

Negative control variables are sometimes used in non-experimental studies to detect the presence of confounding by hidden factors. A negative control outcome (NCO) is an outcome that is influenced by unobserved confounders of the exposure effects on the outcome in view, but is not causally impacted by the exposure. Tchetgen Tchetgen (2013) introduced the Control Outcome Calibration Approach (COCA) as a formal NCO counterfactual method to detect and correct for residual…

气候归因中的高维格兰杰因果分析AI 解读

In this paper we test for Granger causality in high-dimensional vector autoregressive models (VARs) to disentangle and interpret the complex causal chains linking radiative forcings and global temperatures. By allowing for high dimensionality in the model, we can enrich the information set with relevant natural and anthropogenic forcing variables to obtain reliable causal relations. This provides a step forward from existing climatology literature, which has mostly treated…

函数型数据的时空因子模型及人口地图预测应用AI 解读

The proliferation of mobile devices has led to the collection of large amounts of population data. This situation has prompted the need to utilize this rich, multidimensional data in practical applications. In response to this trend, we have integrated functional data analysis (FDA) and factor analysis to address the challenge of predicting hourly population changes across various districts in Tokyo. Specifically, by assuming a Gaussian process, we avoided the large…

紧致空间上的时间序列及生态相对丰度动态建模AI 解读

Motivated by the dynamic modeling of relative abundance data in ecology, we introduce a general approach to model stationary Markovian or non Markovian time series on (relatively) compact spaces such as a hypercube, the simplex or a sphere in the Euclidean space. Our approach is based on a general construction of infinite memory models, called chains with complete connections. The two main ingredients involved in our generic construction are a parametric family of…

利用神经网络估计暴露分布变化的因果效应AI 解读

A fundamental task in causal inference is estimating the effect of distribution shift in the treatment variable. We refer to this problem as shift-response function (SRF) estimation. Existing neural network methods for causal inference lack theoretical guarantees and practical implementations for SRF estimation. In this paper, we introduce Targeted Regularization for Exposure Shifts with Neural Networks (TRESNET), a method to estimate SRFs with robustness and efficiency…

随机试验中不完整基线协变量的调整：跨世界插补框架AI 解读

In randomized controlled trials, adjusting for baseline covariates is often applied to improve the precision of treatment effect estimation. However, missingness in covariates is common. Recently, Zhao & Ding (2022) studied two simple strategies, the single imputation method and missingness indicator method (MIM), to deal with missing covariates, and showed that both methods can provide efficiency gain. To better understand and compare these two strategies, we propose and…

无需唯一识别或闭合条件的极小极大工具变量回归及 L₂ 收敛保证AI 解读

In this paper, we study nonparametric estimation of instrumental variable (IV) regressions. Recently, many flexible machine learning methods have been developed for instrumental variable estimation. However, these methods have at least one of the following limitations: (1) restricting the IV regression to be uniquely identified; (2) only obtaining estimation error rates in terms of pseudometrics (\emph{e.g.,} projected norm) rather than valid metrics (\emph{e.g.,} $L_2$ norm)…

维度增长下非参数交互模型的深度神经网络估计AI 解读

Deep neural networks have achieved tremendous success due to their representation power and adaptation to low-dimensional structures. Their potential for estimating structured regression functions has been recently established in the literature. However, most of the studies require the input dimension to be fixed and consequently ignore the effect of dimension on the rate of convergence and hamper their applications to modern big data with high dimensionality. In this paper,…

用于数字广告边际处理效应估计的多单元实验AI 解读

Randomized experiments with treatment and control groups are an important tool to measure the impacts of interventions. However, in experimental settings with one-sided noncompliance extant empirical approaches may not produce the estimands a decision maker needs to solve the problem of interest. For example, these experimental designs are common in digital advertising settings but typical methods do not yield effects that inform the intensive margin: how many consumers…

聚类协变量回归AI 解读

High covariate dimensionality is increasingly occurrent in model estimation, and existing techniques to address this issue typically require sparsity or discrete heterogeneity of the \emph{unobservable} parameter vector. However, neither restriction may be supported by economic theory in some empirical contexts, leading to severe bias and misleading inference. The clustering-based grouped parameter estimator (GPE) introduced in this paper drops both restrictions and…

具有马尔可夫结构的面板数据混合逻辑回归模型AI 解读

In this study, we propose a mixture logistic regression model with a Markov structure, and consider the estimation of model parameters using maximum likelihood estimation. We also provide a forward type variable selection algorithm to choose the important explanatory variables to reduce the number of parameters in the proposed model.