每日简报

未测混杂与干扰并存时的空间因果推断AI 解读

This manuscript unites causal inference and spatial statistics, presenting novel insights for causal inference in spatial data analysis, and drawing from tools in spatial statistics to estimate causal effects. We introduce spatial causal graphs to highlight that spatial confounding and interference can be entangled, in that investigating the presence of one can lead to wrongful conclusions in the presence of the other. Moreover, we show that spatial dependence in the…

断点回归效应及其外部有效性的联合推断AI 解读

The external validity of regression discontinuity designs is crucial for informing policy but is rarely examined in applied work. To advance empirical practice, we propose a joint inference procedure for the treatment effect and its local external validity, captured by the treatment effect derivative (TED), within a robust bias correction framework. We further introduce a locally linear treatment effects assumption, which extends the scope of the TED and enables…

面板因果模型中未测混杂的识别诊断：两阶段 LM–Wald 方法AI 解读

Panel data are widely used in political science to draw causal inferences. However, these models often rely on the strong and untested assumption of sequential ignorability--that no unmeasured variables influence both the independent and outcome variables across time. Grounded in psychometric literature on latent variable modeling, this paper introduces the Two-Stage LM-Wald (2SLW) approach, a diagnostic tool that extends the Lagrange Multiplier (LM) and Wald tests to detect…

预测货币份额的贝叶斯 Dirichlet 自回归条件异方差模型AI 解读

We analyze daily Airbnb service-fee shares across eleven settlement currencies, a compositional series that shows bursts of volatility after shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Standard Dirichlet time series models assume constant precision and therefore miss these episodes. We introduce B-DARMA-DARCH, a Bayesian Dirichlet autoregressive moving average model with a Dirichlet ARCH component, which lets the precision parameter follow an ARMA recursion. The specification…

连续纵向中间变量下主层分层的敏感性分析：队列阶梯楔形试验应用AI 解读

Causal inference in the presence of intermediate variables is a challenging problem in many applications. Principal stratification (PS) provides a framework to estimate principal causal effects (PCE) in such settings. However, existing PS methods primarily focus on settings with binary intermediate variables. We propose a novel approach to estimate PCE with continuous intermediate variables in the context of stepped wedge cluster randomized trials (SW-CRTs). Our method…

非结构化数据稳健与有效推断的统一框架AI 解读

To analyze unstructured data (text, images, audio, video), economists typically first extract low-dimensional structured features with a neural network. Neural networks do not make generically unbiased predictions, and biases will propagate to estimators that use their predictions. While structured variables extracted from unstructured data have traditionally been treated as proxies - implicitly accepting arbitrary measurement error - this poses various challenges in an era…

用于观察性研究因果推断的 AI 贝叶斯生成式建模AI 解读

Causal inference in observational studies with high-dimensional covariates presents significant challenges. We introduce CausalBGM, an AI-powered Bayesian generative modeling approach that captures the causal relationship among covariates, treatment, and outcome. The core innovation is to estimate the individual treatment effect (ITE) by learning the individual-specific distribution of a low-dimensional latent feature set (e.g., latent confounders) that drives changes in…

经验贝叶斯收缩通常不能纠正回归中的测量误差AI 解读

In the value-added literature, it is often claimed that regressing on empirical Bayes shrinkage estimates corrects for the measurement error problem in linear regression. We clarify the conditions needed; we argue that these conditions are stronger than the those needed for classical measurement error correction, which we advocate for instead. Moreover, we show that the classical estimator cannot be improved without stronger assumptions. We extend these results to…

估计器由其实际行为定义：模型误设、目标量与过度识别AI 解读

In over-identified models, misspecification -- the norm rather than exception -- fundamentally changes what estimators estimate. Different estimators imply different estimands rather than different efficiency for the same target. A review of recent applications of generalized method of moments in the American Economic Review suggests widespread acceptance of this fact: There is little formal specification testing and widespread use of estimators that would be inefficient…

用于主体模型验证的稳健时间序列因果发现AI 解读

Agent-Based Model (ABM) validation is crucial as it helps ensuring the reliability of simulations, and causal discovery has become a powerful tool in this context. However, current causal discovery methods often face accuracy and robustness challenges when applied to complex and noisy time series data, which is typical in ABM scenarios. This study addresses these issues by proposing a Robust Cross-Validation (RCV) approach to enhance causal structure learning for ABM…

广义动态函数主成分分析AI 解读

In this paper, we explore dimension reduction for functional time series. We propose a generalized dynamic functional principal component analysis (GDFPCA) which does not rely on spectral density estimation and demonstrates strong empirical performance for both stationary and nonstationary functional time series. We define the generalized dynamic functional principal components (GDFPCs) as static factor time series in a functional dynamic factor model and obtain their…

经济学中的因果主张AI 解读

As economics scales, a key bottleneck is representing what papers claim in a comparable, aggregable form. We introduce evidence-annotated claim graphs that map each paper into a directed network of standardized economic concepts (nodes) and stated relationships (edges), with each edge labeled by evidentiary basis, including whether it is supported by causal inference designs or by non-causal evidence. Using a structured multi-stage AI workflow, we construct claim graphs for…

因果工具变量模型中的贝叶斯模型平均AI 解读

Instrumental variables are a popular tool to infer causal effects under unobserved confounding, but choosing suitable instruments is challenging in practice. We propose gIVBMA, a Bayesian model averaging procedure that addresses this challenge by averaging across different sets of instrumental variables and covariates in a structural equation model. This allows for data-driven selection of valid and relevant instruments and provides additional robustness against invalid…

三重稳健面板估计量AI 解读

This paper studies estimation of causal effects in a panel data setting. We introduce a new estimator, the Triply RObust Panel (TROP) estimator, that combines (i) a flexible model for the potential outcomes based on a low-rank factor structure on top of a two-way-fixed effect specification, with (ii) unit weights intended to upweight units similar to the treated units and (iii) time weights intended to upweight time periods close to the treated time periods. We study the…