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Switchback experiments are widely used in pricing applications. We consider a retailer running such an experiment for the price of a single product, with infinite supply. In each period, the seller chooses a price from a set of predefined prices consisting of an original price and a few discounted price levels. The goal is to estimate the demand gradient at the original price to adjust the original price and improve revenue after the experiment. In our model, in each period,…

自适应实验中策略改进价值的推断AI 解读

In this paper, we develop an asymptotically normal estimator for the value of policy improvement (VPI) under adaptively collected data. This value, which is defined as the gap between the value of the best treatment policy in a class and that of a baseline policy, gauges whether or not it is worth deploying a personalized treatment policy. Building an estimator for the VPI is naturally more difficult than estimating the value of a fixed policy. This is because, in addition…

通过因果数据融合衡量礼品卡项目的增量收入AI 解读

Businesses regularly offer gift card programs to drive customer spending and increase engagement. A central question is how much incremental revenue these programs generate, and which channels drive it most efficiently. Measuring the incremental revenue associated with a gift card program is a challenging problem in causal inference, requiring a firm to infer how much each customer would have spent if they never received a gift card. Observational data on past customer…

长话短说：因果机器学习中的遗漏变量偏误AI 解读

We develop a general theory of omitted variable bias for a wide range of common causal parameters, including (but not limited to) averages of potential outcomes, average treatment effects, average causal derivatives, and policy effects from covariate shifts. Our theory applies to nonparametric models, while naturally allowing for (semi-)parametric restrictions (such as partial linearity) when such assumptions are made. We show how simple plausibility judgments on the maximum…

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…

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…

动态处理效应与一般嵌套泛函的自动去偏机器学习AI 解读

Many canonical models in causal inference and structural econometrics have recursive identification formulas. In causal inference, recursion arises when identification requires both pre- and post-treatment covariates. For example, short-term surrogate outcomes are measured after the treatment, and serve as necessary covariates when identifying long-term effects. Post-treatment covariates are also required for identification of dynamic difference-in-differences designs,…

日志的有限证词：模型选择受混杂影响时的语言模型生成评估AI 解读

Offline evaluation of language models from usage logs is biased when model choice is confounded: the same user-side factors that influence which model is used can also influence how its output is judged, so raw comparisons of logged scores mix self-selected populations rather than estimating a common quantity of interest. A small randomized experiment can break this bias by overriding model choice, but in practice such experiments are scarce and costly. We study a…

通过最优传输部分识别工具变量下的政策相关处理效应AI 解读

Policy-Relevant Treatment Effects (PRTEs) are generally not point-identified under standard Instrumental Variable (IV) assumptions when the instrument generates limited support in treatment propensity. We show that PRTE partial identification in the generalized Roy model can instead be formulated as a Constrained Conditional Optimal Transport (CCOT) problem over the joint conditional law of the potential outcome and the latent resistance. The resulting multidimensional CCOT…

通过 Softmax 平滑推断最优政策价值及其他非正则泛函AI 解读

Constructing confidence intervals for the value of an (unknown) optimal treatment policy is a fundamental problem in causal inference. Insight into the optimal policy value can guide the development of reward-maximizing, individualized treatment regimes. However, because the functional that defines the optimal value is non-differentiable, standard semi-parametric approaches for performing inference fail to be directly applicable. Many existing works circumvent…

考虑激励的合成控制：通过激励探索准确估计反事实AI 解读

Synthetic control methods (SCMs) are a canonical approach used to estimate treatment effects from panel data in the internet economy. We shed light on a frequently overlooked but ubiquitous assumption made in SCMs of "overlap": a treated unit can be written as some combination -- typically, convex or linear -- of the units that remain under control. We show that if units select their own interventions, and there is sufficiently large heterogeneity between units that prefer…

允许弃权的政策学习AI 解读

Policy learning algorithms are widely used in areas such as personalized medicine and advertising to develop individualized treatment regimes. However, most methods force a decision even when predictions are uncertain, which is risky in high-stakes settings. We study policy learning with abstention, where a policy may defer to a safe default or an expert. When a policy abstains, it receives a small additive reward on top of the value of a random guess. We propose a two-stage…

一般线性泛函估计的尖锐结构无关下界AI 解读

We establish a general statistical optimality theory for estimation problems where the target parameter is a linear functional of an unknown nuisance component that must be estimated from data. This formulation covers many causal and predictive parameters and has applications to numerous disciplines. We adopt the structure-agnostic framework introduced by \citet{balakrishnan2023fundamental}, which poses no structural properties on the nuisance functions other than access to…

正态性并不容易：噪声对不依赖结构的估计的影响AI 解读

Structure-agnostic causal inference studies how well one can estimate a treatment effect given black-box machine learning estimates of nuisance functions (like the impact of confounders on treatment and outcomes). Here, we find that the answer depends in a surprising way on the distribution of the treatment noise. Focusing on the partially linear model of \citet{robinson1988root}, we first show that the widely adopted double machine learning (DML) estimator is minimax…

强化学习数据收集后的统计推断AI 解读

We study estimation and inference using data collected by reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. These algorithms adaptively experiment by interacting with individual units over multiple stages, updating their strategies based on past outcomes. Our goal is to evaluate a counterfactual policy after data collection and estimate structural parameters, such as dynamic treatment effects, that support credit assignment and quantify the impact of early actions on final outcomes.…

协变量分布偏移下的自动去偏机器学习AI 解读

We present machine learning estimators for causal and predictive parameters under covariate shift, where covariate distributions differ between training and target populations. One such parameter is the average effect of a policy that alters the covariate distribution, such as a treatment modifying surrogate covariates used to predict long-term outcomes. Another example is the average treatment effect for a population with a shifted covariate distribution, like the effect of…

为后续工具变量回归学习处理变量表征AI 解读

Traditional instrumental variable (IV) estimators face a fundamental constraint: they can only accommodate as many endogenous treatment variables as available instruments. This limitation becomes particularly challenging in settings where the treatment is presented in a high-dimensional and unstructured manner (e.g. descriptions of patient treatment pathways in a hospital). In such settings, researchers typically resort to applying unsupervised dimension reduction techniques…

极端与未观测数据中的处理效应估计AI 解读

Causal effect estimation seeks to determine the impact of an intervention from observational data. However, the existing causal inference literature primarily addresses treatment effects on frequently occurring events. But what if we are interested in estimating the effects of a policy intervention whose benefits, while potentially important, can only be observed and measured in rare yet impactful events, such as extreme climate events? The standard causal inference…

处理效应估计中双重稳健学习的结构无关最优性AI 解读

Average treatment effect estimation is the most central problem in causal inference with application to numerous disciplines. While many estimation strategies have been proposed in the literature, the statistical optimality of these methods has still remained an open area of investigation, especially in regimes where these methods do not achieve parametric rates. In this paper, we adopt the recently introduced structure-agnostic framework of statistical lower bounds, which…

自动双重稳健随机森林AI 解读

This paper proposes the automatic Doubly Robust Random Forest (DRRF) algorithm for estimating the conditional expectation of a moment functional in the presence of high-dimensional nuisance functions. DRRF extends the automatic debiasing framework based on the Riesz representer to the conditional setting and enables nonparametric, forest-based estimation (Athey et al., 2019; Oprescu et al., 2019). In contrast to existing methods, DRRF does not require prior knowledge of the…

动态局部平均治疗效应AI 解读

We consider Dynamic Treatment Regimes (DTRs) with One Sided Noncompliance that arise in applications such as digital recommendations and adaptive medical trials. These are settings where decision makers encourage individuals to take treatments over time, but adapt encouragements based on previous encouragements, treatments, states, and outcomes. Importantly, individuals may not comply with encouragements based on unobserved confounders. For settings with binary treatments…

正交因果校准AI 解读

Estimates of heterogeneous treatment effects such as conditional average treatment effects (CATEs) and conditional quantile treatment effects (CQTEs) play an important role in real-world decision making. Given this importance, one should ensure these estimates are calibrated. While there is a rich literature on calibrating estimators of non-causal parameters, very few methods have been derived for calibrating estimators of causal parameters, or more generally estimators of…

用于条件平均处理效应模型选择的因果 Q 聚合AI 解读

Accurate estimation of conditional average treatment effects (CATE) is at the core of personalized decision making. While there is a plethora of models for CATE estimation, model selection is a nontrivial task, due to the fundamental problem of causal inference. Recent empirical work provides evidence in favor of proxy loss metrics with double robust properties and in favor of model ensembling. However, theoretical understanding is lacking. Direct application of prior…

条件影响函数AI 解读

There are many nonparametric objects of interest that are a function of a conditional distribution. One important example is an average treatment effect conditional on a subset of covariates. Many of these objects have a conditional influence function that generalizes the classical influence function of a functional of a (unconditional) distribution. Conditional influence functions have important uses analogous to those of the classical influence function. They can be used…