每日简报

通过考虑推断的政策优化缓解赢家诅咒AI 解读

There has been a surge of recent interest in automatically learning policies to target treatment decisions based on rich individual covariates. In addition, practitioners want confidence that the learned policy has better performance than the incumbent policy according to downstream policy evaluation. However, due to the winner's curse -- an issue where the policy optimization procedure exploits prediction errors rather than finding actual improvements -- predicted…

加权估计敏感性模型中混杂强度的校准：比较综述与新方法AI 解读

Causal inference is only valid when its underlying assumptions are satisfied, one of the most central being the ignorability or unconfoundedness assumption. However, this hypothesis is often unrealistic in observational studies, as some confounding variables may remain unobserved. To address this limitation, sensitivity models for Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) estimators, known as Marginal Sensitivity Models, have been introduced, allowing for a controlled relaxation…

拥抱离散搜索：因果结构学习的一种可行方法AI 解读

We present FLOP (Fast Learning of Order and Parents), a score-based causal discovery algorithm for linear models. It pairs fast parent selection with iterative Cholesky-based score updates, cutting run-times over prior algorithms. This makes it feasible to fully embrace discrete search, enabling iterated local search with principled order initialization to find graphs with scores at or close to the global optimum. The resulting structures are highly accurate across…

处理后混杂下集群随机试验因果机制的贝叶斯非参数识别与估计AI 解读

Causal mediation analysis in cluster-randomized trials (CRTs) is essential for explaining how cluster-level interventions affect individual outcomes, yet it is complicated by interference, post-treatment confounding, and hierarchical covariate adjustment. We develop a Bayesian nonparametric framework that simultaneously accommodates interference and a post-treatment confounder that precedes the mediator. Identification is achieved through a multivariate Gaussian copula that…

自适应实验的设计稳定性及其对处理效应估计的影响AI 解读

We study the problem of estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) under sequentially adaptive treatment assignment mechanisms. In contrast to classical completely randomized designs, we consider a setting in which the probability of assigning treatment to each experimental unit may depend on prior assignments and observed outcomes. Within the potential outcomes framework, we propose and analyze two natural estimators for the ATE: the inverse propensity weighted (IPW)…

重复匹配博弈的实证框架AI 解读

We introduce a model of dynamic matching with transferable utility, extending the static model of Shapley and Shubik (1971). Forward-looking agents have individual states that evolve with current matches. Each period, a matching market with market-clearing prices takes place. We prove the existence of an equilibrium with time-varying distributions of agent types and show it is the solution to a social planner's problem. We also prove that a stationary equilibrium exists. We…

衡量健康不平等的因果方差分解AI 解读

Recent causal inference literature has introduced causal effect decompositions to quantify sources of observed inequalities or disparities in outcomes, but these approaches are typically limited to pairwise comparisons. In healthcare delivery settings, both the exposure of interest-hospital or healthcare unit-and sociodemographic group membership may be polytomous, making pairwise contrasts inadequate. We therefore take the observed variance in care delivery outcomes as the…

将专家知识纳入有向无环图混合的贝叶斯因果发现AI 解读

Bayesian causal discovery benefits from prior information elicited from domain experts, and in heterogeneous domains any prior knowledge would be badly needed. However, so far prior elicitation approaches have assumed a single causal graph and hence are not suited to heterogeneous domains. We propose a causal elicitation strategy for heterogeneous settings, based on Bayesian experimental design (BED) principles, and a variational mixture structure learning (VaMSL) method --…

处理效应异质性的变量重要性推断：Shapley 值及其拓展AI 解读

We provide an inferential framework to assess variable importance for heterogeneous treatment effects. This assessment is especially useful in high-risk domains such as medicine, where decision makers hesitate to rely on black-box treatment recommendation algorithms. The variable importance measures we consider are local in that they may differ across individuals, while the inference is global in that it tests whether a given variable is important for any individual. Our…

平行趋势违反时双重差分前匹配的偏差—方差权衡AI 解读

Quasi-experimental causal inference methods have become central in empirical operations management for guiding managerial decisions. Among these, empiricists utilize the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimator, which relies on the parallel trends assumption. To improve its plausibility, researchers often match treated and control units before applying DiD, with the intuition that matched groups are more likely to evolve similarly absent treatment. Existing work that…

学习相关奖励模型：统计障碍与机会AI 解读

Random Utility Models (RUMs) are a classical framework for modeling user preferences and play a key role in reward modeling for Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). However, a crucial shortcoming of many of these techniques is the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) assumption, which collapses \emph{all} human preferences to a universal underlying utility function, yielding a coarse approximation of the range of human preferences. On the other hand,…

估计处理效应异质性的目标联邦学习框架：稳健方法与老龄队列应用AI 解读

Analyzing data from multiple sources offers valuable opportunities to improve the estimation efficiency of causal estimands. However, this analysis also poses many challenges due to population heterogeneity and data privacy constraints. While several advanced methods for causal inference in federated settings have been developed in recent years, many focus on difference-based averaged causal effects and are not designed to study effect modification. In this study, we…

因果效应可识别性的粒度AI 解读

The classical notion of causal effect identifiability is defined in terms of treatment and outcome variables. In this paper, we consider the identifiability of state-based causal effects: how an intervention on a particular state of treatment variables affects a particular state of outcome variables. We demonstrate that state-based causal effects may be identifiable even when variable-based causal effects may not. Moreover, we show that this separation occurs only when…

语言模型能否在不引入统计偏差的情况下提高随机实验功效？AI 解读

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely adopted for causal inference, yet cost and sample-size constraints limit power. We introduce CALM (Causal Analysis leveraging Language Models), a statistical framework that integrates insights generated by large language models (LLMs) into the analysis of RCTs using established causal estimators to increase precision while preserving statistical validity. In particular, CALM treats LLM-generated outputs as auxiliary prognostic…

离散时间滞后鞅差阵列的稳定中心极限定理及动态因果应用AI 解读

Recent work in dynamic causal inference introduced a class of discrete-time stochastic processes that generalize martingale difference sequences and arrays as follows: the random variates in each sequence have expectation zero given certain lagged filtrations but not given the natural filtration. We formalize this class of stochastic processes and prove stable central limit theorems (CLTs) via martingale-coboundary decomposition, leveraging the classical martingale CLT. We…

风险调整的政策学习与不确定性的社会成本：共同农业政策评估AI 解读

This paper develops a risk-adjusted alternative to standard optimal policy learning (OPL) for observational data by importing Roy's (1952) safety-first principle into the treatment assignment problem. We formalize a welfare functional that maximizes the probability that outcomes exceed a socially required threshold and show that the associated pointwise optimal rule ranks treatments by the ratio of conditional means to conditional standard deviations. We implement the…

利用大语言模型直接猜测条件期望以改善因果估计效率AI 解读

We propose a simple yet effective use of LLM-powered AI tools to improve causal estimation. In double machine learning, the accuracy of causal estimates of the effect of a treatment on an outcome in the presence of a high-dimensional confounder depends on the performance of estimators of conditional expectation functions. We show that predictions made by generative models trained on historical data can be used to improve the performance of these estimators relative to…

未知网络下异质性干扰效应的识别与估计AI 解读

Interference--in which a unit's outcome is affected by the treatment of other units--poses significant challenges for the identification and estimation of causal effects. Most existing methods for estimating interference effects assume that the interference networks are known. In many practical settings, this assumption is unrealistic as such networks are typically latent. To address this challenge, we propose a novel framework for identifying and estimating heterogeneous…

未知网络下的干扰政策效应评估：迁移学习方法AI 解读

This paper develops a sensitivity analysis framework that transfers the average total treatment effect (ATTE) from source data with a fully observed network to target data whose network is completely unknown. The ATTE represents the average social impact of a policy that assigns the treatment to every individual in the dataset. We postulate a covariate-shift type assumption that both source and target datasets share the same conditional mean outcome. However, because the…

空间标量对函数分位数回归模型AI 解读

This paper introduces a novel spatial scalar-on-function quantile regression model that extends classical scalar-on-function models to account for spatial dependence and heterogeneous conditional distributions. The proposed model incorporates spatial autocorrelation through a spatially lagged response and characterizes the entire conditional distribution of a scalar outcome given a functional predictor. To address the endogeneity induced by the spatial lag term, we develop…

二元结果高维广义线性模型中的因果推断AI 解读

This paper proposes a debiased estimator for causal effects in high-dimensional generalized linear models with binary outcomes and general link functions. The estimator augments a regularized regression plug-in with weights computed from a convex optimization problem that approximately balances link-derivative-weighted covariates and controls variance; it does not rely on estimated propensity scores. Under standard conditions, the estimator is $\sqrt{n}$-consistent and…

双重差分中的空间与时间边界：源自纳维–斯托克斯方程的框架AI 解读

This paper develops a unified framework for identifying spatial and temporal boundaries of treatment effects in difference-in-differences designs. Starting from fundamental fluid dynamics equations (Navier-Stokes), we derive conditions under which treatment effects decay exponentially in space and time, enabling researchers to calculate explicit boundaries beyond which effects become undetectable. The framework encompasses both linear (pure diffusion) and nonlinear…

动态空间处理效应边界：源自纳维–斯托克斯方程的连续函数框架AI 解读

I develop a comprehensive theoretical framework for dynamic spatial treatment effect boundaries using continuous functional definitions grounded in Navier-Stokes partial differential equations. Rather than discrete treatment effect estimators, the framework characterizes treatment intensity as a continuous function $τ(\mathbf{x}, t)$ over space-time, enabling rigorous analysis of propagation dynamics, boundary evolution, and cumulative exposure patterns. Building on exact…

中介路径分析中的 Copula 结构方程模型AI 解读

Structural equation models (SEMs) are fundamental to causal mediation pathway discovery. However, traditional SEM approaches often rely on \emph{ad hoc} model specifications when handling complex data structures such as mixed data types or non-normal data in which Gaussian assumptions for errors are rather restrictive. The invocation of copula dependence modeling methods to extend the classical linear SEMs mitigates several of key technical limitations, offering greater…