每日简报

利用观测数据估计因果效应：农业与应用经济学研究指南AI 解读

Most research questions in agricultural and applied economics are of a causal nature, i.e., how one or more variables (e.g., policies, prices, the weather) affect one or more other variables (e.g., income, crop yields, pollution). Only some of these research questions can be studied experimentally. Most empirical studies in agricultural and applied economics thus rely on observational data. However, estimating causal effects with observational data requires appropriate…

基于锚定的因果设计：估计信念的影响AI 解读

A central challenge in any study of the effects of beliefs on outcomes, such as decisions and behavior, is the risk of omitted variables bias. Omitted variables, frequently unmeasured or even unknown, can induce correlations between beliefs and decisions that are not genuinely causal, in which case the omitted variables are referred to as confounders. To address the challenge of causal inference, researchers frequently rely on information provision experiments to randomly…

用于因果推断的贝叶斯双重机器学习AI 解读

This paper proposes a simple, novel, and fully-Bayesian approach for causal inference in partially linear models with high-dimensional control variables. Off-the-shelf machine learning methods can introduce biases in the causal parameter known as regularization-induced confounding. To address this, we propose a Bayesian Double Machine Learning (BDML) method, which modifies a standard Bayesian multivariate regression model and recovers the causal effect of interest from the…

因果 SHAP：通过因果发现实现依赖关系感知的特征归因AI 解读

Explaining machine learning (ML) predictions has become crucial as ML models are increasingly deployed in high-stakes domains such as healthcare. While SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) is widely used for model interpretability, it fails to differentiate between causality and correlation, often misattributing feature importance when features are highly correlated. We propose Causal SHAP, a novel framework that integrates causal relationships into feature attribution while…

用于个性化与透明证据综合的加权方法AI 解读

Over the past few decades, statistical methods for causal inference have made impressive strides, enabling progress across a range of scientific fields. However, much of this methodological development has been confined to individual studies, limiting its ability to draw more generalizable conclusions. Achieving a thorough understanding of cause and effect typically relies on the integration, reconciliation, and synthesis from diverse study designs and multiple data sources.…

二元分布回归：理论、估计及代际流动应用AI 解读

We employ distribution regression (DR) to estimate the joint distribution of two outcome variables conditional on chosen covariates. While Bivariate Distribution Regression (BDR) is useful in a variety of settings, it is particularly valuable when some dependence between the outcomes persists after accounting for the impact of the covariates. Our analysis relies on a result from Chernozhukov et al. (2018) which shows that any conditional joint distribution has a local…

用偏相关图LASSO识别网络枢纽AI 解读

Graphical LASSO (GLASSO) is a widely used method for estimating sparse precision matrices and learning undirected graphical models in high-dimensional settings. Because GLASSO penalizes entries of the precision matrix directly, however, it is not scale-invariant. Partial Correlation Graphical LASSO (PCGLASSO), introduced by Carter et al. (2024), addresses this limitation by penalizing partial correlations, which directly characterize conditional dependence. In this paper, we…

结合实验与观察数据对分布处理效应参数的识别能力AI 解读

This study investigates whether and how combining experimental data, in which treatment is randomized, with observational data, in which treatment is self-selected, improves identification of distributional treatment effect (DTE) parameters. Many DTE parameters remain partially identified even under randomized treatment assignment. We show that the combined data reveal how potential-outcome distributions vary across latent self-selection types and that this information fully…

基于加性树模型的两样本密度比比较AI 解读

The ratio of two densities provides a direct characterization of their differences. We consider the two-sample comparison problem by estimating this ratio given i.i.d. observations from two distributions. To this end, we propose additive tree models for density ratio estimation along with efficient algorithms using a new loss function, the balancing loss. The loss allows tree-based models to be trained using several algorithms originally designed for supervised learning,…

因子增强分位数回归模型AI 解读

Along with the widespread adoption of high-dimensional data, traditional statistical methods face significant challenges in handling problems with high correlation of variables, heavy-tailed distribution, and coexistence of sparse and dense effects. In this paper, we propose a factor-augmented quantile regression (FAQR) framework to address these challenges simultaneously within a unified framework. The proposed FAQR combines the robustness of quantile regression and the…

一般误差分布下贝叶斯因果发现的 DAG 选择一致性AI 解读

We consider the problem of learning the underlying causal structure among a set of variables, which are assumed to follow a Bayesian network or, more specifically, a linear recursive structural equation model (SEM) with the associated errors being independent and allowed to be non-Gaussian. A Bayesian hierarchical model is proposed to identify the true data-generating directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure where the nodes and edges represent the variables and the direct…

用于因果推断的结构保持表征学习神经网络AI 解读

Recent developments in causal inference have greatly shifted the interest from estimating the average treatment effect to the individual treatment effect. In this article, we improve the predictive accuracy of representation learning and adversarial networks in estimating individual treatment effects by introducing a structure keeper which maintains the correlation between the baseline covariates and their corresponding representations in the high dimensional space. We train…

断点回归设计中的结构外推：学校支出公投应用AI 解读

We propose a structural approach to extrapolate average partial effects away from the cutoff in regression discontinuity designs (RDDs). Our focus is on applications that exploit closely contested school district referenda to estimate the effects of changes in education spending on local economic outcomes. We embed these outcomes in a spatial equilibrium model of local jurisdictions in which fiscal policy is determined by majority rule voting. This integration provides a…

同时反馈与未观测混杂下的同伴效应估计AI 解读

Estimating peer causal effects within complex real-world networks such as social networks is challenging, primarily due to simultaneous feedback between peers and unobserved confounders. Existing methods either address unobserved confounders while ignoring the simultaneous feedback, or account for feedback but under restrictive linear assumptions, thus failing to obtain accurate peer effect estimation. In this paper, we propose DIG2RSI, a novel Deep learning framework which…

误差方差弱递增下最小迹有向无环图的可识别性与爬山搜索AI 解读

We prove that the true underlying directed acyclic graph (DAG) in Gaussian linear structural equation models is identifiable as the minimum-trace DAG when the error variances are weakly increasing with respect to the true causal ordering. This result bridges two existing frameworks as it extends the identifiable cases within the minimum-trace DAG method and provides a principled interpretation of the algorithmic ordering search approach, revealing that its objective is…

高维非线性模型中的潜在混杂AI 解读

We consider the the problem of identifying causal effects given a high-dimensional treatment vector in the presence of low-dimensional latent confounders. We assume a parametric structural causal model in which the outcome is permitted to depend on a sparse linear combination of the treatment vector and confounders nonlinearly. We consider a generalisation of the LAVA estimator of Chernozhukov et al. [2017] for estimating the treatment effects and show that under the…

空间一般均衡中的随机边界：基于扩散的溢出效应因果推断AI 解读

This paper introduces a novel framework for causal inference in spatial economics that explicitly models the stochastic transition from partial to general equilibrium effects. We develop a Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) integrated with boundary detection methods from stochastic process theory to identify when and how treatment effects propagate beyond local markets. Our approach treats the evolution of spatial spillovers as a Lévy process with jump-diffusion…

用于因果推断中自动混杂发现与子群分析的大语言模型智能体AI 解读

Estimating individualized treatment effects from observational data presents a persistent challenge due to unmeasured confounding and structural bias. Causal Machine Learning (causal ML) methods, such as causal trees and doubly robust estimators, provide tools for estimating conditional average treatment effects. These methods have limited effectiveness in complex real-world environments due to the presence of latent confounders or those described in unstructured formats.…

单调连续处理效应曲线的双重稳健逐点置信区间AI 解读

We study nonparametric inference for the causal dose-response (or treatment effect) curve when the treatment variable is continuous rather than binary or discrete. We do this by developing doubly robust confidence intervals for the continuous treatment effect curve (at a fixed point) under the assumption that it is monotonic, based on inverting a likelihood ratio-type test. Monotonicity of the treatment effect curve is often a very natural assumption, and this assumption…

基于 Copula 标准化流的未观测混杂敏感性分析AI 解读

We propose a novel method for sensitivity analysis to unobserved confounding in causal inference. The method builds on a copula-based causal graphical normalizing flow that we term $ρ$-GNF, where $ρ\in [-1,+1]$ is the sensitivity parameter. The parameter represents the non-causal association between exposure and outcome due to unobserved confounding, which is modeled as a Gaussian copula. In other words, the $ρ$-GNF enables scholars to estimate the average causal effect…

观点：因果机器学习的广泛应用需要严格的合成实验AI 解读

Causal machine learning has the potential to revolutionize decision-making by combining the predictive power of machine learning algorithms with the theory of causal inference. However, these methods remain underutilized by the broader machine learning community, in part because current empirical evaluations do not permit assessment of their reliability and robustness, undermining their practical utility. Specifically, one of the principal criticisms made by the community is…

序贯自适应实验的有效统计估计及其对自适应设计的启示AI 解读

Adaptive experimental designs have gained popularity in clinical trials and online experiments. Unlike traditional, fixed experimental designs, adaptive designs can dynamically adjust treatment randomization probabilities and other design features in response to data accumulated sequentially during the experiment. These adaptations are useful to achieve diverse objectives, including reducing uncertainty in the estimation of causal estimands or increasing participants'…

工具变量回归中弱工具稳健推断的统计学指南及 Python 示例AI 解读

We provide an overview of results relating to estimation and weak-instrument-robust inference in instrumental variables regression. Methods are implemented in the ivmodels software package for Python, which we use to illustrate results.

合理量化不确定性：经验贝叶斯歧视检测中的置信区间AI 解读

We revisit empirical Bayes discrimination detection, focusing on uncertainty arising from both partial identification and sampling variability. While prior work has mostly focused on partial identification, we find that some empirical findings are not robust to sampling uncertainty. To better connect statistical evidence to the magnitude of real-world discriminatory behavior, we propose a counterfactual odds-ratio estimand with a attractive properties and interpretation. Our…