每日简报

二元选择模型的简便高功效诊断检验AI 解读

Conventional binary choice models, such as probit and logit, impose thin-tailed errors, and that tail determines whether the parameters of a binary choice model can be estimated at the regular rate. We test the restriction on observables, asking whether the conditional choice probability decays at a polynomial rate in a covariate. Identification of tail heaviness requires no independence, no linear index, and no homoskedasticity. The test is simple to implement and attains…

具有潜在转移异质性的离散结果事件研究设计AI 解读

We develop an identification strategy for average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) in panel data with discrete outcomes. For such outcomes, the parallel trends assumption underlying difference-in-differences (DiD) fails in three distinct ways: mean reversion generates divergent trends when groups differ at baseline, counterfactual probabilities can leave the unit interval, and no single trend is well defined for multi-category outcomes. We replace parallel trends with…

均衡模型中的固定总体因果推断AI 解读

In contrast to problems of interference in (exogenous) treatments, models of interference in unit-specific (endogenous) outcomes do not usually produce a reduced-form representation where outcomes depend on other units' treatment status only at a short network distance, or only through a known exposure mapping. This remains true if the structural mechanism depends on outcomes of peers only at a short network distance, or through a known exposure mapping. In this paper, we…

GMM 何时具有 LATE 解释？过度识别工具变量中的权重矩阵与因果含义AI 解读

Under heterogeneous treatment effects, the weighting matrix of overidentified IV-GMM selects the estimand, not just its precision. We characterize the selection exactly: for any parameter-free weighting-matrix map, the GMM estimand is a sum-to-one combination of instrument-specific Wald estimands, with closed-form weights and an exact non-negativity condition; efficient weighting adds a heterogeneity penalty. Continuously updated GMM exits this class through a variance-score…

利用折点与跳点处聚集行为进行部分识别AI 解读

This paper proposes a partial identification approach to using choices around a kink or notch as a means to overcome endogeneity in a general nonparametric choice model. I show that observed choices are informative about the joint distribution of two counterfactual choices, which leads naturally to analyzing bunching using tools from causal inference. I define as the parameter of interest an average treatment effect among bunchers, which nests the traditional elasticity…

存在干扰时的断点回归设计AI 解读

We extend the continuity-based framework to Regression Discontinuity Designs (RDDs) to identify and estimate causal effects under interference when units are connected through a network. Assignment to an "effective treatment," combining the individual treatment and a summary of neighbors' treatments, is determined by the unit's score and those of interfering units, yielding a multiscore RDD with complex, multidimensional boundaries. We characterize these boundaries and…

多处理、多结果与未测混杂下的部分识别AI 解读

Estimating the health effects of multiple air pollutants is a crucial problem in public health, but one that is difficult due to unmeasured confounding bias. Motivated by this issue, we develop a framework for partial identification of causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding in settings with multiple treatments and multiple outcomes. Under a factor confounding assumption, we show that joint partial identification regions for multiple estimands can be more…

异质性处理效应下的三重差分设计AI 解读

Triple difference designs have become increasingly popular in empirical economics. The advantage of a triple difference design is that, within a treatment group, it allows another subgroup of the population -- potentially less impacted by the treatment -- to serve as a comparison for the subgroup of interest. While literature on difference-in-differences has discussed heterogeneity in treatment effects between treated and control groups or over time, relatively little…

利用补充样本检验参数模型中的可观测变量选择假设AI 解读

In panels with sample selection (that may occur due to attrition, nonresponse, etc.), the assumption of selection on observables (missing at random, MAR) is commonly imposed despite often being implausible. However, this assumption becomes testable when a refreshment sample is available. We develop a statistical test of MAR based on a distance between two estimated distributions: one obtained using the standard inverse probability weighting (IPW) that is valid under MAR and…

识别设计AI 解读

This paper introduces a model of identification design in which the decision maker observes the population distribution of signals generated by an information structure and ranks actions by their worst-case payoff over the admissible state distributions consistent with those signals. The environment is manipulable if every action is implementable under every admissible distribution of the state variable, and strongly so if this is achievable via almost fully informative…

利用观测数据对齐语言模型：因果视角下的机会与风险AI 解读

Large language models are being widely used across industries to generate text that contributes directly to key performance metrics, such as medication adherence in patient messaging and conversion rates in content generation. Pretrained models, however, often fall short when it comes to aligning with human preferences or optimizing for business objectives. As a result, fine-tuning with good-quality labeled data is essential to guide models to generate content that achieves…

有限重叠下平均处理效应的估计：多项式逼近与外推AI 解读

Estimating the average treatment effect (ATE) remains a fundamental challenge in observational studies in the presence of poor or limited covariate overlap. Although the inverse probability weighting (IPW) estimator is a widely used approach for estimating the ATE, its performance can deteriorate substantially when overlap is limited, often resulting in increased finite sample bias and unreliable confidence intervals. One common strategy is to shift attention from the…

一步结果插补：多重插补的替代方法AI 解读

Missing outcomes in randomized controlled trials are often handled by multiple imputation (MI). Rubin's rules are routinely used to estimate standard errors but can fail to provide valid standard error estimates for some commonly used procedures, such as reference-based imputation. We propose a one-step alternative by explicitly targeting the treatment effect implied by a given imputation model and constructing an efficient one-step estimator for that treatment effect via…

合成增量效应：将合成控制推广至动态处理效应AI 解读

We propose a generalization of the synthetic control methods to the setting with dynamic treatment effects, in which each unit receives multiple treatments sequentially, according to an adaptive policy that depends on a latent, endogenously time-varying confounding state. Under a low-rank latent factor model assumption, which admits linear time-varying and time-invariant dynamic triangular systems as special cases, we develop an identification strategy for any unit-specific…

由成对互动得到的部分识别排序AI 解读

This paper considers the problem of ranking objects based on their latent merits using data from pairwise interactions. We allow for incomplete observation of these interactions and study what can be inferred about rankings in such settings. First, we show that identification of the ranking depends on a tradeoff between the tournament graph and the link function: in parametric models, such as the Bradley-Terry-Luce, rankings are point identified even with sparse graphs,…

时变协变量下交错双重差分处理效应的双重稳健估计AI 解读

With staggered adoption, difference-in-differences (DiD) analyses define the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) at the group-period level and aggregate it into groupwise, periodwise, dynamic, and overall effects. We study a period-by-period version of conditional parallel trends, with covariates unaffected by treatment while allowing covariates to shift the trends in untreated potential outcomes. We propose an augmented inverse probability weighting (AIPW)…

未观测混杂下二元结果的双向因果推断AI 解读

Bidirectional causal relationships arising from mutual interactions between variables are commonly observed within biomedical, econometrical, and social science contexts. When such relationships are further complicated by unobserved factors, identifying causal effects in both directions becomes especially challenging. For continuous variables, methods that utilize two instrumental variables from both directions have been proposed to explore bidirectional causal effects…

网络中的测量误差与同伴效应AI 解读

In many practical applications, only noisy proxies for the true regressors are available, which is commonly believed to induce an attenuation bias. In the linear-in-means model, however, estimated peer effects might be inflated, potentially leading to false positives. This paper shows that the asymptotic bias depends on the interplay between individual characteristics and network links and demonstrates how the network structure can facilitate identification without the need…

机器学习工具变量下的识别与推断AI 解读

Instrumental-variables estimation increasingly pools many or high-dimensional instruments into a single machine-learned first stage, with rich controls partialled out. The resulting estimand, the partialled-out IV coefficient built from any signal of the instruments, is a signal-weighted average of the heterogeneous effects, which gives an opaque first stage a precise structural meaning. The average is convex whenever a covariance-monotonicity condition holds, and we provide…

加权平均处理效应的一步目标最大似然估计AI 解读

We consider Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation (TMLE) of weighted average treatment effects (WATEs), a class of causal estimands that reweight the covariate distribution using a specified function of the propensity score. This class includes the average treatment effect and average treatment effect on the treated, as well as various overlap-based targets. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the one-step TMLE along the universal least favorable path for such…

非可分双边关系回归AI 解读

This paper studies a nonseparable model for dyadic outcomes, such as bilateral trade flows, in which the outcome depends on both agents' characteristics and on a scalar unobservable through an unknown function increasing in that unobservable. I establish identification of a normalized structural function and the error distribution, propose kernel plug-in estimators, and derive a two-regime central limit theory under dyadic dependence in which a shared-agent variance…

CausalSmith：以形式化验证为基础的自我改进因果推断研究代理框架AI 解读

Automating theoretical research requires generating candidate results and evaluating them reliably. Models keep getting better at the first, while the second remains hard. A common approach asks one large language model (LLM) to review what another produced, yet such reviewers are empirically unreliable: they may accept fabricated papers and catch the fabrication at close to chance rates~\citep{badscientist2025}. We present \textsc{CausalSmith}, a framework for automated…

非参数贝叶斯政策学习AI 解读

I propose Nonparametric Bayesian Policy Learning (NBPL) as a framework for uncertainty-aware treatment choice. The key observation is that welfare is fully determined by a reduced-form distribution, so uncertainty about optimal policies entirely reflects uncertainty about this distribution. NBPL places a Dirichlet process prior on the reduced-form distribution and uses the resulting posterior for both traditional policy choice and inference on optimal welfare and optimal…

生成式人工智能辅助的非结构化数据动态因果推断AI 解读

A growing number of scholars seek to estimate causal effects of unstructured data such as text, images, and video. However, existing methods typically treat each object as a single, static observation. We develop a statistical framework for dynamic causal inference with unstructured data by leveraging generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) models. Our approach enables researchers to estimate the causal effects of sequences of treatment features, including their positions…