每日简报

RAPSEM：无需序贯可忽略性的秩保持结构方程模型潜在中介识别AI 解读

Standard structural equation models (SEMs) are often used to identify latent mediators. However, valid inference typically relies on the strong, frequently violated Sequential Ignorability assumption. We introduce the Rank-Preserving Structural Equation Model (RAPSEM), which increases robustness through G-estimation while maintaining the measurement model's integrity through a two-stage method of moments (2SMM) for factor score corrections. RAPSEM replaces the no unmeasured…

随机临床试验中协变量调整 g-computation 的偏差减少AI 解读

G-computation is a powerful method for estimating unconditional treatment effects with covariate adjustment in randomized clinical trials. It typically relies on fitting canonical generalized linear models. However, this could be problematic when the sample size or event number is small relative to the number of covariates. Common issues include the underestimation of the variance and the potential nonexistence of maximum likelihood estimators. Bias reduction methods are…

矩阵值时间序列共同变动的分解：拟结构降秩方法AI 解读

A pseudo-structural framework is proposed for analyzing contemporaneous co-movements in stationary reduced-rank matrix autoregressive (RRMAR) models. Unlike conventional vector autoregressive (VAR) models that discard the matrix structure, the formulation preserves it, enabling a decomposition of co-movements into three interpretable components: row-specific, column-specific, and joint (row--column) interactions across the matrix-valued time series. The estimator admits…

复杂系统的推断极限：随机模型何时不可区分AI 解读

Robust inference for stochastic dynamical systems is often hampered by sparse sampling and the absence of closed-form likelihoods. We introduce a Monte Carlo path-inference framework that leverages full-path statistics and bridge processes to deliver reliable parameter estimation and model selection from coarsely sampled time series, without requiring analytical solutions. Crucially, we couple mechanistic stochastic models with their inference procedures to quantify how…

死亡导致退出时的纵向处理效应：二维目标量与生活质量案例AI 解读

When longitudinal outcomes are evaluated in mortal populations, their non-existence after death complicates the analysis and its causal interpretation. Where popular methods often merge longitudinal outcome and survival into one scale or otherwise try to circumvent the problem of mortality, some highly relevant questions require survival to be acknowledged as a unique condition. "\textit{What are my chances of survival}" and "\textit{What can I expect for my condition while…

回归模型中的对数与零值问题AI 解读

The log transformation is widely used in linear regression, mainly because coefficients are interpretable as proportional effects. Yet this practice has fundamental limitations, most notably that the log is undefined at zero, creating an identification problem. We propose a new estimator, iterated OLS (iOLS), which targets the normalized average treatment effect, preserving the percentage-change interpretation while addressing these limitations. Our procedure is the…

线性面板数据模型中固定效应的最优收缩估计AI 解读

Shrinkage methods are frequently used to improve the precision of least squares estimators of fixed effects. However, widely used shrinkage estimators guarantee improved precision only under strong distributional assumptions. I develop an estimator for the fixed effects that obtains the best possible mean squared error within a class of shrinkage estimators. This class includes conventional shrinkage estimators and the optimality does not require distributional assumptions.…

风险比、优势比与风险差：哪种因果效应尺度更易推广？AI 解读

There are many measures to report so-called treatment or causal effects: absolute difference, ratio, odds ratio, number needed to treat, and so on. The choice of a measure, e.g. absolute versus relative, is often debated because it leads to different impressions of the benefit or risk of a treatment. Besides, different causal measures may lead to various treatment effect heterogeneity: some input variables may have an influence on some causal measures and no effect at all on…

结合实验与观察数据识别和估计长期因果效应AI 解读

We study identifying and estimating the causal effect of a treatment variable on a long-term outcome using data from an observational and an experimental domain. The observational data are subject to unobserved confounding. Furthermore, subjects in the experiment are only followed for a short period; thus, long-term effects are unobserved, though short-term effects are available. Consequently, neither data source alone suffices for causal inference on the long-term outcome,…

半参数敏感性分析：观察性研究中的未测量混杂AI 解读

Establishing cause-effect relationships from observational data often relies on untestable assumptions. It is crucial to know whether, and to what extent, the conclusions drawn from non-experimental studies are robust to potential unmeasured confounding. In this paper, we focus on the average causal effect (ACE) as our target of inference. We generalize the sensitivity analysis approach developed by Robins et al. (2000), Franks et al. (2020), and Zhou and Yao (2023). We use…

教师偏见还是测量误差？AI 解读

Subjective teacher evaluations play a key role in shaping students' educational trajectories. Previous studies have shown that students of low socioeconomic status (SES) receive worse subjective evaluations than their high SES peers, even when they score similarly on objective standardized tests. This is often interpreted as evidence of teacher bias. Measurement error in test scores challenges this interpretation. We discuss how both classical and non-classical measurement…

随机试验中分配对因果效应定义与识别的作用AI 解读

In randomized trials, the per-protocol effect, that is, the effect of being assigned a treatment strategy and receiving treatment according to the assigned strategy, is sometimes thought to reflect the effect of the treatment strategy itself, without intervention on assignment. Here, we argue by example that this is not necessarily the case. We examine a causal structure for a randomized trial where these two causal estimands -- the per-protocol effect and the effect of the…

模型孪生随机化：重复个体处理效应的估计AI 解读

Temporally dense single-person "small data" have become widely available thanks to mobile apps and wearable sensors. Many caregivers and self-trackers want to use these data to help a specific person change their behavior to achieve desired health outcomes. Ideally, this involves discerning possible causes from correlations using that person's own observational time series data. In this paper, we estimate within-individual average treatment effects of physical activity on…

CP 张量因子模型的估计与推断AI 解读

High-dimensional tensor-valued data have recently gained attention from researchers in economics and finance. We consider the estimation and inference of high-dimensional tensor factor models, where each dimension of the tensor diverges. Our focus is on a factor model that admits CP-type tensor decomposition, which allows for non-orthogonal loading vectors. Based on the contemporary covariance matrix, we propose an iterative simultaneous projection estimation method. Our…

稳健的高维时变系数估计AI 解读

In this paper, we develop a novel high-dimensional coefficient estimation procedure based on high-frequency data. Unlike usual high-dimensional regression procedures such as LASSO, we additionally handle the heavy-tailedness of high-frequency observations as well as time variations of coefficient processes. Specifically, we employ the Huber loss and a truncation scheme to handle heavy-tailed observations, while $\ell_{1}$-regularization is adopted to overcome the curse of…

将含协变量的非负矩阵分解与向量自回归结合分析多变量时间序列AI 解读

We propose a novel framework for analyzing multivariate time series (MTS) data by integrating non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) with vector autoregression (VAR). Termed NMF-VAR, this method models the coefficient matrix of NMF as a VAR process, enabling simultaneous extraction of latent components and temporal dependencies. Unlike standard VAR, which struggles with high dimensionality and lacks clarity, our method introduces a low-rank latent structure that reduces the…

随机试验中外部对照数据的稳健整合AI 解读

One approach for increasing the efficiency of randomized trials is the use of "external controls" -- individuals who received the control treatment studied in the trial during routine practice or in prior experimental studies. Existing external control methods, however, can be biased if the populations underlying the trial and the external control data are not exchangeable. Here, we characterize a randomization-aware class of treatment effect estimators in the population…

动态离散选择模型中的连续永久不可观测异质性AI 解读

In dynamic discrete choice (DDC) analysis, it is common to use mixture models to control for unobserved heterogeneity. However, consistent estimation typically requires both restrictions on the support of unobserved heterogeneity and a high-level injectivity condition that is difficult to verify. This paper provides primitive conditions for point identification of a broad class of DDC models with multivariate continuous permanent unobserved heterogeneity. The results apply…

HP-ACCORD：临床多组学研究中的大规模偏相关网络学习AI 解读

Graphical model estimation from multi-omics data requires a balance between statistical estimation performance and computational scalability. We introduce a novel pseudolikelihood-based graphical model framework that reparameterizes the target precision matrix while preserving the sparsity pattern and estimates it by minimizing an $\ell_1$-penalized empirical risk based on a new loss function. The proposed estimator maintains estimation and selection consistency in various…

偶尔约束生效条件下的协整AI 解读

In the literature on nonlinear cointegration, a long-standing open problem relates to how a (nonlinear) vector autoregression, which provides a unified description of the short- and long-run dynamics of a vector of time series, can generate 'nonlinear cointegration' in the profound sense of those series sharing common nonlinear stochastic trends. We consider this problem in the setting of the censored and kinked structural VAR (CKSVAR), which provides a flexible yet…

重尾高频金融观测下的因子与特质 VAR 波动率矩阵模型AI 解读

This paper introduces a novel process for both factor and idiosyncratic volatility matrices whose eigenvalues follow the vector auto-regressive (VAR) model. We call it the factor and idiosyncratic VAR (FIVAR) model. The FIVAR model accounts for the dynamics of the factor and idiosyncratic volatilities and includes many parameters. In addition, many empirical studies have shown that high-frequency stock returns and volatilities often exhibit heavy tails. To handle these two…

校准敏感性模型AI 解读

In causal inference, sensitivity models assess how unmeasured confounders could alter causal analyses, but the sensitivity parameter -- which quantifies the degree of unmeasured confounding -- is often difficult to interpret. For this reason, researchers sometimes compare the sensitivity parameter to an estimate of measured confounding. This is known as calibration, or benchmarking. However, calibrated estimates are not always interpreted correctly, and uncertainty in the…

通过迭代扩展因果图选择混杂变量AI 解读

Confounder selection, namely choosing a set of covariates to control for confounding between a treatment and an outcome, is arguably the most important step in the design of an observational study. Previous methods, such as Pearl's back-door criterion, typically require pre-specifying a causal graph, which can often be difficult in practice. We propose an interactive procedure for confounder selection that does not require pre-specifying the graph or the set of observed…

随机实验中一般回归调整的方差锐界AI 解读

A growing statistical literature focuses on causal inference in the context of experiments where the target of inference is the average treatment effect in a finite population and random assignment determines which subjects are allocated to one of the experimental conditions. In this framework, variances of average treatment effect estimators remain unidentified because they depend on the covariance between treated and untreated potential outcomes, which are never jointly…