每日简报

稳定的降秩向量自回归模型识别AI 解读

The vector autoregression (VAR) has been widely used in system identification, econometrics, natural science, and many other areas. However, when the state dimension becomes large the parameter dimension explodes. So rank reduced modelling is attractive and is well developed. But a fundamental requirement in almost all applications is stability of the fitted model. And this has not been addressed in the rank reduced case. Here, we develop, for the first time, a closed-form…

基于条件矩方法的异质性处理效应估计AI 解读

We propose a new estimator for heterogeneous treatment effects in a partially linear model (PLM) with multiple exogenous covariates and a potentially endogenous treatment variable. Our approach integrates a Robinson transformation to handle the nonparametric component, the Smooth Minimum Distance (SMD) method to leverage conditional mean independence restrictions, and a Neyman-Orthogonalized first-order condition (FOC). By employing regularized model selection techniques…

通过加权处理整群随机试验中的选择偏差AI 解读

In cluster randomized experiments, individuals are often recruited after the cluster treatment assignment, and data are typically only available for the recruited sample. Post-randomization recruitment can lead to selection bias, inducing systematic differences between the overall and the recruited populations, and between the recruited intervention and control arms. In this setting, we define causal estimands for the overall and the recruited populations. We prove, under…

非线性遗憾下的处理选择AI 解读

The literature focuses on the mean of welfare regret, which can lead to undesirable treatment choice due to sensitivity to sampling uncertainty. We propose to minimize the mean of a nonlinear transformation of regret and show that singleton rules are not essentially complete for nonlinear regret. Focusing on mean square regret, we derive closed-form fractions for finite-sample Bayes and minimax optimal rules. Our approach is grounded in decision theory and extends to limit…

由随机线性扩展推断偏序：十二世纪王室文书中的权力关系AI 解读

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries in England, Wales and Normandy, Royal Acta were legal documents in which witnesses were listed in order of social status. Any bishops present were listed as a group. For our purposes, each witness-list is an ordered permutation of bishop names with a known date or date-range. Changes over time in the order bishops are listed may reflect changes in their authority. Historians would like to detect and quantify these changes. There is no…

支持随时有效因果推断的多臂老虎机实验设计AI 解读

Experimentation is crucial for managers to rigorously quantify the value of a change and determine if it leads to a statistically significant improvement over the status quo. As companies increasingly mandate that all changes undergo experimentation before widespread release, two challenges arise: (1) minimizing the proportion of customers assigned to the inferior treatment and (2) increasing experimentation velocity by enabling data-dependent stopping. This paper addresses…

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…

基于异质环境优化的因果估计AI 解读

This paper presents a new optimization approach to causal estimation. Given data that contains covariates and an outcome, which covariates are causes of the outcome, and what is the strength of the causality? In classical machine learning (ML), the goal of optimization is to maximize predictive accuracy. However, some covariates might exhibit a non-causal association with the outcome. Such spurious associations provide predictive power for classical ML, but they prevent us…

没有对照组的因果推断与政策评价AI 解读

Without a control group, the most widespread methodologies for estimating causal effects cannot be applied. To fill this gap, we propose the Machine Learning Control Method, a new approach for causal panel analysis that estimates causal parameters without relying on untreated units. We formalize identification within the potential outcomes framework and then provide estimation based on machine learning algorithms. To illustrate the practical relevance of our method, we…

因果潜在因子模型中的双重稳健推断AI 解读

This article introduces a new estimator of average treatment effects under unobserved confounding in modern data-rich environments featuring large numbers of units and outcomes. The proposed estimator is doubly robust, combining outcome imputation, inverse probability weighting, and a novel cross-fitting procedure for matrix completion. We derive finite-sample and asymptotic guarantees, and show that the error of the new estimator converges to a mean-zero Gaussian…

基于广义 Bierens 最大统计量的条件矩限制参数推断AI 解读

Many economic panel and dynamic models, such as rational behavior and Euler equations, imply that the parameters of interest are identified by conditional moment restrictions. We introduce a novel inference method without any prior information about which conditioning instruments are weak or irrelevant. Building on Bierens (1990), we propose penalized maximum statistics and combine bootstrap inference with model selection. Our method optimizes asymptotic power by solving a…

异方差下的非线性协整检验AI 解读

This article discusses Shin (1994, Econometric Theory)-type tests for nonlinear cointegration in the presence of variance breaks. We build on cointegration test approaches under heteroskedasticity (Cavaliere and Taylor, 2006, Journal of Time Series Analysis) and nonlinearity, serial correlation, and endogeneity (Choi and Saikkonen, 2010, Econometric Theory) to propose a bootstrap test and prove its consistency. A Monte Carlo study shows the approach to have satisfactory…

非参数刀切工具变量估计与抗混杂替代指标AI 解读

Jackknife instrumental variable estimation (JIVE) is a classic method to leverage many weak instrumental variables (IVs) to estimate linear structural models, overcoming the bias of standard methods like two-stage least squares. In this paper, we extend the jackknife approach to nonparametric IV (NPIV) models with many weak IVs. Since NPIV characterizes the structural regression as having residuals projected onto the IV being zero, existing approaches minimize an estimate of…

事件研究中的有限类型异质性处理效应AI 解读

A key assumption of the differences-in-differences designs is that the average evolution of untreated potential outcomes is the same across different treatment cohorts: a parallel trends assumption. In this paper, we relax the parallel trend assumption by assuming a latent type variable and developing a type-specific parallel trend assumption. With a finite support assumption on the latent type variable and long pretreatment time periods, we show that an extremum classifier…

连续多时点干预的因果推断AI 解读

There are limited options to estimate the treatment effects of variables which are continuous and measured at multiple time points, particularly if the true dose-response curve should be estimated as closely as possible. However, these situations may be of relevance: in pharmacology, one may be interested in how outcomes of people living with -- and treated for -- HIV, such as viral failure, would vary for time-varying interventions such as different drug concentration…

多变量中间区间随机化设计AI 解读

In a tie-breaker design (TBD), subjects with high values of a running variable are given some (usually desirable) treatment, subjects with low values are not, and subjects in the middle are randomized. TBDs are intermediate between regression discontinuity designs (RDDs) and randomized controlled trials (RCTs). TBDs allow a tradeoff between the resource allocation efficiency of an RDD and the statistical efficiency of an RCT. We study a model where the expected response is…

Deflated HeteroPCA：克服异方差主成分分析的病态条件数问题AI 解读

This paper is concerned with estimating the column subspace of a low-rank matrix $\boldsymbol{X}^\star \in \mathbb{R}^{n_1\times n_2}$ from contaminated data. How to obtain optimal statistical accuracy while accommodating the widest range of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) becomes particularly challenging in the presence of heteroskedastic noise and unbalanced dimensionality (i.e., $n_2\gg n_1$). While the state-of-the-art algorithm $\textsf{HeteroPCA}$ emerges as a powerful…

降低凸回归中的过拟合AI 解读

Convex regression is a method for estimating the convex function from a data set. This method has played an important role in operations research, economics, machine learning, and many other areas. However, it has been empirically observed that convex regression produces inconsistent estimates of convex functions and extremely large subgradients near the boundary as the sample size increases. In this paper, we provide theoretical evidence of this overfitting behavior. To…

存在治疗中止的肿瘤随机试验中事件时间结局的因果效应评估AI 解读

In clinical trials, patients may discontinue treatments prematurely, breaking the initial randomization and, thus, challenging inference. Stakeholders in drug development are generally interested in going beyond the Intention-To-Treat (ITT) analysis, which provides valid causal estimates of the effect of treatment assignment but does not inform on the effect of the actual treatment receipt. Our study is motivated by an RCT in oncology, where patients assigned the…

Multi-CATE：对未知协变量分布变化稳健的多重准确条件平均处理效应估计AI 解读

Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects is important to tailor treatments to those individuals who would most likely benefit. However, conditional average treatment effect predictors may often be trained on one population but possibly deployed on different, possibly unknown populations. We use methodology for learning multi-accurate predictors to post-process CATE T-learners (differenced regressions) to become robust to unknown covariate shifts at the time of deployment.…

面向高维因果推断的深度因果生成模型模块化学习AI 解读

Sound and complete algorithms have been proposed to compute identifiable causal queries using the causal structure and data. However, most of these algorithms assume accurate estimation of the data distribution, which is impractical for high-dimensional variables such as images. On the other hand, modern deep generative architectures can be trained to sample from high-dimensional distributions. However, training these networks are typically very costly. Thus, it is desirable…

从非结构化自然语言数据端到端估计因果效应AI 解读

Knowing the effect of an intervention is critical for human decision-making, but current approaches for causal effect estimation rely on manual data collection and structuring, regardless of the causal assumptions. This increases both the cost and time-to-completion for studies. We show how large, diverse observational text data can be mined with large language models (LLMs) to produce inexpensive causal effect estimates under appropriate causal assumptions. We introduce…

用于纵向反事实回归的因果对比学习AI 解读

Estimating treatment effects over time holds significance in various domains, including precision medicine, epidemiology, economy, and marketing. This paper introduces a unique approach to counterfactual regression over time, emphasizing long-term predictions. Distinguishing itself from existing models like Causal Transformer, our approach highlights the efficacy of employing RNNs for long-term forecasting, complemented by Contrastive Predictive Coding (CPC) and Information…

具有双曲贴现的动态离散选择模型识别AI 解读

We study identification of dynamic discrete choice models with hyperbolic discounting. We show that the standard discount factor, present bias factor, and instantaneous utility functions for the sophisticated agent are point-identified from observed conditional choice probabilities and transition probabilities in a finite horizon model. The main idea to achieve identification is to exploit variation in the observed conditional choice probabilities over time. We present the…