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非可忽略协变量缺失下优化动态治疗方案的加权 Q-learningAI 解读

Dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) formalize medical decision-making as a sequence of rules for different stages, mapping patient-level information to recommended treatments. In practice, estimating an optimal DTR using observational data from electronic medical record (EMR) databases can be complicated by nonignorable missing covariates resulting from informative monitoring of patients. Since complete case analysis can provide consistent estimation of outcome model parameters…

利用有限重叠的随机临床试验改进敏感性分析AI 解读

Randomized clinical trials are the gold standard when estimating the average treatment effect. However, they are usually not a random sample from the real-world population because of the inclusion/exclusion rules. Meanwhile, observational studies typically consist of representative samples from the real-world population. However, due to unmeasured confounding, sensitivity analysis is often used to estimate bounds for the average treatment effect without relying on stringent…

一步平滑样条工具变量回归AI 解读

We extend nonparametric regression smoothing splines to a context where there is endogeneity and instrumental variables are available. Unlike popular existing estimators, the resulting estimator is one-step and relies on a unique regularization parameter. We derive rates of the convergence for the estimator and its first derivative, which are uniform in the support of the endogenous variable. We also address the issue of imposing monotonicity in estimation and extend the…

比例风险下限制平均生存时间检验与对数秩检验的效率比较AI 解读

Background: For RCTs with time-to-event endpoints, proportional hazard (PH) models are typically used to estimate treatment effects and logrank tests are commonly used for hypothesis testing. There is growing support for replacing this approach with a model-free estimand and assumption-lean analysis method. One alternative is to base the analysis on the difference in restricted mean survival time (RMST) at a specific time, a single-number summary measure that can be defined…

未观测混杂下的公平性审计AI 解读

Many definitions of fairness or inequity involve unobservable causal quantities that cannot be directly estimated without strong assumptions. For instance, it is particularly difficult to estimate notions of fairness that rely on hard-to-measure concepts such as risk (e.g., quantifying whether patients at the same risk level have equal probability of treatment, regardless of group membership). Such measurements of risk can be accurately obtained when no unobserved…

存在孤立节点时的溢出效应估计AI 解读

In estimating spillover effects under network interference, practitioners often use linear regression with either the number or fraction of treated neighbors as regressors. An often overlooked fact is that the latter is undefined for units without neighbors (``isolated nodes"). The common practice is to impute this fraction as zero for isolated nodes. This paper shows that such practice introduces bias through theoretical derivations and simulations. Causal interpretations…

含隐蔽混杂的循环模型因果发现方法比较AI 解读

Nowadays, the need for causal discovery is ubiquitous. A better understanding of not just the stochastic dependencies between parts of a system, but also the actual cause-effect relations, is essential for all parts of science. Thus, the need for reliable methods to detect causal directions is growing constantly. In the last 50 years, many causal discovery algorithms have emerged, but most of them are applicable only under the assumption that the systems have no feedback…

含内生解释变量的商品组合选择模型：汽水税应用AI 解读

This paper proposes a Bayesian factor-augmented bundle choice model to estimate joint consumption as well as the substitutability and complementarity of multiple goods in the presence of endogenous regressors. The model extends the two primary treatments of endogeneity in existing bundle choice models: (1) endogenous market-level prices and (2) time-invariant unobserved individual heterogeneity. A Bayesian sparse factor approach is employed to capture high-dimensional error…

卷积众数回归AI 解读

For highly skewed or fat-tailed distributions, mean or median-based methods often fail to capture the central tendencies in the data. Despite being a viable alternative, estimating the conditional mode given certain covariates (or mode regression) presents significant challenges. Nonparametric approaches suffer from the "curse of dimensionality", while semiparametric strategies often lead to non-convex optimization problems. In order to avoid these issues, we propose a novel…

一类非正则计量模型中的最小切片距离估计AI 解读

This paper proposes minimum sliced distance estimation in structural econometric models with possibly parameter-dependent supports. In contrast to likelihood-based estimation, we show that under mild regularity conditions, the minimum sliced distance estimator is asymptotically normally distributed leading to simple inference regardless of the presence/absence of parameter dependent supports. We illustrate the performance of our estimator on an auction model.

实验项目收益的优化AI 解读

Experimentation in online digital platforms is used to inform decision making. Specifically, the goal of many experiments is to optimize a metric of interest. Null hypothesis statistical testing can be ill-suited to this task, as it is indifferent to the magnitude of effect sizes and opportunity costs. Given access to a pool of related past experiments, we discuss how experimentation practice should change when the goal is optimization. We survey the literature on empirical…

具有内生情境变量的因果发现AI 解读

Causal systems often exhibit variations of the underlying causal mechanisms between the variables of the system. Often, these changes are driven by different environments or internal states in which the system operates, and we refer to context variables as those variables that indicate this change in causal mechanisms. An example are the causal relations in soil moisture-temperature interactions and their dependence on soil moisture regimes: Dry soil triggers a dependence of…

用于验证与推断的边际因果流模型AI 解读

Investigating the marginal causal effect of an intervention on an outcome from complex data remains challenging due to the inflexibility of employed models and the lack of complexity in causal benchmark datasets, which often fail to reproduce intricate real-world data patterns. In this paper we introduce Frugal Flows, a novel likelihood-based machine learning model that uses normalising flows to flexibly learn the data-generating process, while also directly inferring the…

R.O.A.D.：通向临床试验模拟的框架AI 解读

Observational studies provide the only evidence on the effectiveness of interventions when randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are impractical due to cost, ethical concerns, or time constraints. While many methodologies aim to draw causal inferences from observational data, there is a growing trend to model observational study designs after RCTs, a strategy known as "target trial emulation." Despite its potential, causal inference through target trial emulation cannot fully…

控制基于预测集的决策支持系统中的反事实伤害AI 解读

Decision support systems based on prediction sets help humans solve multiclass classification tasks by narrowing down the set of potential label values to a subset of them, namely a prediction set, and asking them to always predict label values from the prediction sets. While this type of systems have been proven to be effective at improving the average accuracy of the predictions made by humans, by restricting human agency, they may cause harm$\unicode{x2014}$a human who…

消除神经网络解释中的伪相关AI 解读

The existing algorithms for identification of neurons responsible for undesired and harmful behaviors do not consider the effects of confounders such as topic of the conversation. In this work, we show that confounders can create spurious correlations and propose a new causal mediation approach that controls the impact of the topic. In experiments with two large language models, we study the localization hypothesis and show that adjusting for the effect of conversation…

SpaCE：空间混杂评测环境AI 解读

Spatial confounding poses a significant challenge in scientific studies involving spatial data, where unobserved spatial variables can influence both treatment and outcome, possibly leading to spurious associations. To address this problem, we introduce SpaCE: The Spatial Confounding Environment, the first toolkit to provide realistic benchmark datasets and tools for systematically evaluating causal inference methods designed to alleviate spatial confounding. Each dataset…

星系形成中的先天与后天因素：用因果机器学习研究环境对恒星形成的影响AI 解读

Understanding how galaxies form and evolve is at the heart of modern astronomy. With the advent of large-scale surveys and simulations, remarkable progress has been made in the last few decades. Despite this, the physical processes behind the phenomena, and particularly their importance, remain far from known, as correlations have primarily been established rather than the underlying causality. We address this challenge by applying the causal inference framework.…

随机实验中的内生干扰AI 解读

This paper investigates the identification and inference of treatment effects in randomized controlled trials with social interactions. Two key network features characterize the setting and introduce endogeneity: (1) latent variables may affect both network formation and outcomes, and (2) the intervention may alter network structure, mediating treatment effects. I make three contributions. First, I define parameters within a post-treatment network framework, distinguishing…

混合有向无环图中的干预式因果发现AI 解读

Causal interactions among a group of variables are often modeled by a single causal graph. In some domains, however, these interactions are best described by multiple co-existing causal graphs, e.g., in dynamical systems or genomics. This paper addresses the hitherto unknown role of interventions in learning causal interactions among variables governed by a mixture of causal systems, each modeled by one directed acyclic graph (DAG). Causal discovery from mixtures is…

形状约束函数型时间序列的状态空间建模AI 解读

Functional time series data frequently appears in econometric analyses, where the functions of interest are subject to some shape constraints, including monotonicity and convexity, as typical of the estimation of the Lorenz curve. This paper proposes a state-space model for time-varying functions to extract trends and serial dependence from functional time series while imposing the shape constraints on the estimated functions. The function of interest is modeled by a convex…

含协变量的局部平均处理效应推断AI 解读

In theory, two-stage least squares (TSLS) identifies a weighted average of covariate-specific local average treatment effects (LATEs) from a saturated specification, without making parametric assumptions on how available covariates enter the model. In practice, TSLS is severely biased as saturation leads to a large number of control dummies and an equally large number of, arguably weak, instruments. This paper derives asymptotically valid tests and confidence intervals for…

环境不变线性最小二乘AI 解读

This paper considers a multi-environment linear regression model in which data from multiple experimental settings are collected. The joint distribution of the response variable and covariates may vary across different environments, yet the conditional expectations of $y$ given the unknown set of important variables are invariant. Such a statistical model is related to the problem of endogeneity, causal inference, and transfer learning. The motivation behind it is…

近似邻域干扰下的辅助变量调整AI 解读

Randomized experiments are the gold standard for causal inference. However, traditional assumptions, such as the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA), often fail in real-world settings where interference between units is present. Network interference, in particular, has garnered significant attention. Structural models, like the linear-in-means model, are commonly used to describe interference; but they rely on the correct specification of the model, which can be…