每日简报

通过离散实验学习个性化连续策略：理论与实证证据AI 解读

Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), or A/B testing, have become the gold standard for optimizing various operational policies on online platforms. However, RCTs on these platforms typically cover a limited number of discrete treatment levels, while the platforms increasingly face complex operational challenges involving optimizing continuous variables, such as pricing and incentive programs. The current industry practice involves discretizing these continuous decision…

在线广告中停止随机游走的因果推断AI 解读

We consider a causal inference problem frequently encountered in online advertising systems, where a publisher (e.g., Instagram, TikTok) interacts repeatedly with human users and advertisers by sporadically displaying to each user an advertisement selected through an auction. Each treatment corresponds to a parameter value of the advertising mechanism (e.g., auction reserve-price), and we want to estimate through experiments the corresponding long-term treatment effect…

具有非参数不可观测异质性的网络模型识别与估计AI 解读

Homophily based on observables is widespread in networks. Therefore, homophily based on unobservables (fixed effects) is also likely to be an important determinant of the interaction outcomes. Failing to properly account for latent homophily (and other complex forms of unobserved heterogeneity) can result in inconsistent estimators and misleading policy implications. To address this concern, we consider a network model with nonparametric unobserved heterogeneity, leaving the…

差异化产品需求的嵌套伪 GMM 估计AI 解读

We propose a fast algorithm for computing the GMM estimator in the BLP demand model (Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes, 1995). Inspired by nested pseudo-likelihood methods for dynamic discrete choice models, our approach avoids repeatedly solving the inverse demand system by swapping the order of the GMM optimization and the fixed-point computation. We show that, by fixing consumer-level outside-option probabilities, BLP's market-share to mean-utility inversion becomes closed-form…

穷尽子组处理效应图中反对同质性的证据评估AI 解读

Exhaustive subgroup treatment effect plots are constructed by displaying all subgroup treatment effects of interest against subgroup sample size, providing a useful overview of the observed treatment effect heterogeneity in a clinical trial. As in any exploratory subgroup analysis, however, the observed estimates suffer from small sample sizes and multiplicity issues. To facilitate more interpretable exploratory assessments, this paper introduces a computationally efficient…

一阶退化下的统计推断AI 解读

We study inference in models where a transformation of parameters exhibits first-order degeneracy -- that is, its gradient is zero or close to zero, making the standard delta method invalid. A leading example is causal mediation analysis, where the indirect effect is a product of coefficients and the gradient degenerates near the origin. In these local regions of degeneracy the limiting behaviors of plug-in estimators depend on nuisance parameters that are not consistently…

评估协变量无法解释的因果效应异质性AI 解读

There has been considerable interest in estimating heterogeneous causal effects across individuals or subpopulations. Researchers often assess causal effect heterogeneity based on the subjects' covariates using the conditional average causal effect (CACE). However, substantial heterogeneity may persist even after accounting for the covariates. Existing work on causal effect heterogeneity unexplained by covariates mainly focused on binary treatment and outcome. In this paper,…

作为生成回归变量的固定效应AI 解读

Many economic models feature moment conditions that involve latent variables. When the latent variables are individual fixed effects in an auxiliary panel data regression, we construct orthogonal moments that eliminate first-order bias induced by estimating the fixed effects. Machine Learning methods and Empirical Bayes methods can be used to improve the estimate of the nuisance parameters in the orthogonal moments. We establish a central limit theorem based on the…

通过修正函数型处理策略估计函数型处理的因果效应AI 解读

Functional data are increasingly prevalent in biomedical research. While functional data analysis has been established for decades, causal inference with functional treatments remains largely unexplored. Existing methods typically focus on estimating the causal average dose response functional (ADRF), which requires strong positivity assumptions and offers limited interpretability. In this work, we target a new causal estimand, the modified functional treatment policy…

死亡截断下生活质量与生存的联合框架及去偏估计AI 解读

Evaluating quality-of-life (QoL) outcomes in populations with high mortality risk is complicated by truncation by death, since QoL is undefined for individuals who do not survive to the planned measurement time. We propose a framework that jointly models the distribution of QoL and survival without extrapolating QoL beyond death. Inspired by multistate formulations, we extend the joint characterization of binary health states and mortality to continuous QoL outcomes. Because…

结局优劣排序概率的双重稳健估计及其耐多药菌研究应用AI 解读

In observational studies, adjusting for confounders is required if a treatment comparison is planned. A crude comparison of the primary endpoint without covariate adjustment will suffer from biases, and the addition of regression models could improve precision by incorporating imbalanced covariates and thus help make correct inference. Desirability of outcome ranking (DOOR) is a patient-centric benefit-risk evaluation methodology designed for randomized clinical trials.…

通过机器学习与二次推断函数优化阶梯楔形设计的估计精度AI 解读

Stepped-wedge designs are increasingly used in randomized experiments to accommodate logistical and ethical constraints by staggering treatment roll-out over time. Despite their popularity, existing analytical methods largely rely on parametric models with linear covariate adjustment and prespecified correlation structures, which may limit achievable precision in practice. We propose a new class of estimators for the causal average treatment effect in stepped-wedge designs…

分解函数型结局处理效应异质性的双重稳健机器学习方法AI 解读

Causal inference is paramount for understanding the effects of interventions, yet extracting personalized insights from increasingly complex data remains a significant challenge for modern machine learning. This is the case, in particular, when considering functional outcomes observed over a continuous domain (e.g., time, or space). Estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects, known as CATE, has emerged as a crucial tool for personalized decision-making, but existing…

谁占优势？澄清整群随机试验中基于胜出统计量的估计目标AI 解读

Treatment effect estimands based on win statistics, including the win ratio, win odds, and win difference are increasingly popular targets for summarizing endpoints in clinical trials. Such win estimands offer an intuitive approach for prioritizing outcomes by clinical importance. The implementation and interpretation of win estimands is complicated in cluster randomized trials (CRTs), where researchers can target fundamentally different estimands on the individual-level or…

利用聚类刀切法改进 CSDID 推断AI 解读

Obtaining reliable inferences with traditional difference-in-differences (DiD) methods can be difficult. Problems can arise when both outcomes and errors are serially correlated, when there are few clusters or few treated clusters, when cluster sizes vary greatly, and in various other cases. In recent years, recognition of the ``staggered adoption'' problem has shifted the focus away from inference towards consistent estimation of treatment effects. One of the most popular…

通过反向依从行为放松单调性：工具变量差分估计目标AI 解读

Standard instrumental variables (IV) methods identify a Local Average Treatment Effect under monotonicity, which rules out defiers. In many empirical environments, however, distinct instruments may induce heterogeneous and even opposing behavioral responses. This paper introduces the Difference-in-Instrumental-Variables (DIIV) estimand, which exploits two instruments with opposing compliance patterns to recover a point-identified and behaviorally interpretable causal effect…

剩余寿命分位数的因果分析框架AI 解读

Estimating prognosis conditional on surviving an initial high-risk period is crucial in clinical research. Yet, standard metrics such as hazard ratios are often difficult to interpret, while mean-based summaries are sensitive to outliers and censoring. We propose a formal causal framework for estimating quantiles of residual lifetime among individuals surviving to a landmark time $t_0$. Our primary estimand, the "Observed Survivor Quantile Contrast" (OSQC), targets pragmatic…

匹配后的双向固定效应估计AI 解读

When estimating treatment effects with two-way fixed effects (2WFE) models, researchers often use matching as a pre-processing step when the parallel trends assumption is thought to hold conditionally on covariates. Specifically, in a first step, each treated unit is matched to one or more untreated units based on observed time-invariant covariates. In the second step, treatment effects are estimated with a 2WFE regression in the matched sample, reweighting the untreated…

非比例风险下平均风险率的高效去偏学习AI 解读

The hazard ratio from the Cox proportional hazards model is a ubiquitous summary of treatment effect. However, when hazards are non-proportional, the hazard ratio can lose a stable causal interpretation and become study-dependent because it effectively averages time-varying effects with weights determined by follow-up and censoring. We consider the average hazard (AH) as an alternative causal estimand: a population-level person-time event rate that remains well-defined and…

以区间删失事件时间为变点的多变量纵向与事件时间联合分析AI 解读

Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor dysfunction, psychiatric disturbances, and cognitive decline. The onset of HD is marked by severe motor impairment, which may be predicted by prior cognitive decline and, in turn, exacerbate cognitive deficits. Clinical data, however, are often collected at discrete time points, so the timing of disease onset is subject to interval censoring. To address the challenges posed…

存在混杂时反事实分布的非参数识别与推断AI 解读

We propose nonparametric identification and semiparametric estimation of joint potential outcome distributions in the presence of confounding. First, in settings with observed confounding, we derive tighter, covariate-informed bounds on the joint distribution by leveraging conditional copulas. To overcome the non-differentiability of bounding min/max operators, we establish the asymptotic properties for both a direct estimator with polynomial margin condition and a smooth…

记录分配概率的自适应实验：固定期限自归一化推断AI 解读

Adaptive randomized experiments update treatment probabilities as data accrue, but still require an end-of-study interval for the average treatment effect (ATE) at a prespecified horizon. Under adaptive assignment, propensities can keep changing, so the predictable quadratic variation of AIPW/DML score increments may remain random. When no deterministic variance limit exists, Wald statistics normalized by a single long-run variance target can be conditionally miscalibrated…

潜在文本处理的因果效应估计AI 解读

Understanding the causal effects of text on downstream outcomes is a central task in many applications. Estimating such effects requires researchers to run controlled experiments that systematically vary textual features. While large language models (LLMs) hold promise for generating text, producing and evaluating controlled variation requires more careful attention. In this paper, we present an end-to-end pipeline for the generation and causal estimation of latent textual…

genriesz：基于广义 Riesz 回归的自动去偏机器学习 Python 包AI 解读

Efficient estimation of causal and structural parameters can be automated using the Riesz representation theorem and debiased machine learning (DML). We present genriesz, an open-source Python package that implements automatic DML and generalized Riesz regression, a unified framework for estimating Riesz representers by minimizing empirical Bregman divergences. This framework includes covariate balancing, nearest-neighbor matching, calibrated estimation, and density ratio…