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网络结构的选择后推断AI 解读

Researchers often use the density of connections between groups of agents, such as communities, blocs, or markets, to characterize the structure of a social or economic network. In many cases, these groups are selected using the network data, making conventional fixed-group inference procedures potentially invalid. To address this issue, we develop two new confidence intervals that are universally valid post-selection in the sense that they guarantee simultaneous coverage…

多个误分类暴露的因果推断：控制变量调整的校准加权方法AI 解读

Exposure misclassification is a common issue prevalent in studies of respiratory infections in cystic fibrosis. Throat swabs are frequently used in place of expectorated or induced sputum cultures, although they have imperfect sensitivity and specificity to detect Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. We develop calibration weighting and control variate estimators for causal inference with multiple misclassified binary exposures and clustered observations. The…

非均匀簇期相关下多干预阶梯楔形试验的参数化时变效应框架AI 解读

Stepped wedge design (SWD) trials typically assume that treatment effects are immediate following implementation, but this assumption is often unrealistic in pragmatic settings where effects evolve over exposure time. This impact is further complicated in multiple-intervention stepped wedge designs (M-SWDs), due to their complex crossover patterns. Existing work has addressed time-varying treatment effects for main effects at the analysis stage using nonparametric…

固定效应因果森林中的异质性衰减及交叉拟合校正AI 解读

Causal forests that estimate conditional average treatment effects by averaging honest leaf-level effects across trees are widely used in fixed-effects panel settings. We show that this averaging systematically attenuates the estimated heterogeneity: the raw prediction behaves like a + b*tau(x) with slope b < 1, so the spread of the CATEs is compressed toward the average effect, and the additive recentering used to report an unbiased average treatment effect does not fix it.…

处理选择与平行趋势AI 解读

We study the role of selection into treatment in difference-in-differences (DiD) designs. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for parallel trends assumptions under general classes of selection mechanisms. These conditions characterize the empirical content of parallel trends and clarify the trade-offs between assumptions about selection into treatment and restrictions on the time series properties of the potential outcomes required for DiD methods. We use the…

半参数推断的 V 折刀切法：方差、置信区间与同时置信带AI 解读

For decades, the bootstrap has been a default tool for statistical inference because of its broad applicability and minimal analytic requirements. Although its validity is well understood for smooth parametric estimators, its theoretical properties for many modern semiparametric and machine-learning estimators remain largely unstudied. Nevertheless, bootstrap procedures are often used routinely in such settings, even when their validity is unknown and their computational…

利用异方差神经网络学习双向因果交互AI 解读

Estimating contemporaneous bidirectional interactions from observational data is difficult because each outcome is endogenous to the other, while flexible regressions may capture only reduced-form dependence. This paper proposes SEM-DNN, a heteroscedastic neural simultaneous-equation estimator that learns reciprocal structural interactions without external instruments. Identification exploits conditional covariance diagonalization: when structural shocks have zero…

异质性同伴效应的识别AI 解读

We develop a model of peer effects where each peer has a separate effect depending on their rank in the distribution of peers' outcomes. Our model admits a unique equilibrium, and model parameters can be identified using peers' exogenous characteristics. To obtain a more parsimonious model of peer effects, we introduce a tractable specification based on quantile-dependent peer effect coefficients, and develop a specification test. Applying the model to several student…

因果推断的干预得分几何AI 解读

Let $p(x)$ be the joint density of variables $X$, and let $ψ(x)=\nabla_x\log p(x)$ be its score field. Geometry constructed from $p$ and $ψ$ alone cannot identify causal direction: structural models with the same observational distribution have the same score geometry. I develop an interventional analogue. A hard intervention $\operatorname{do}(X_k=ξ)$ does not merely reweight the joint law; it restricts the distribution to the submanifold ${x_k=ξ}$. Its score should…

用于协变量平衡评估的加权 KS、CVM 与 AD 检验AI 解读

Assessing covariate balance is a core diagnostic step in causal inference, but commonly used summary measures can miss meaningful distributional differences they are not designed to detect. Distributional goodness-of-fit tests, including the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS), Anderson-Darling (AD), and Cramer-von Mises (CVM) tests, offer a more complete comparison but have previously been available only for unweighted data. We extend all three to accommodate case weights of any…

通过到高斯分布的 Wasserstein 距离进行无对比函数 ICA 与因果推断AI 解读

We study the squared $2$-Wasserstein distance to the standard Gaussian as a non-Gaussianity criterion and use it for linear Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and causal discovery in Linear Non-Gaussian Acyclic Models (LiNGAM). Unlike commonly used parametric contrasts and approximations of information-theoretic quantities, this criterion requires no distributional regularity beyond finite second moments, involves neither approximation nor tuning parameters, and can be…

利用处理前趋势进行双重差分推断AI 解读

Difference-in-differences (DID) are sometimes estimated with many pre-treatment periods. In such settings, the observed pre-treatment outcome evolutions provide direct information about the magnitude of shocks that could also occur after treatment. This paper proposes a simple inference procedure that uses those pre-trends as the reference distribution for the post-treatment DID. The procedure is closely related to existing conformal inference procedures, but its…

GAUGER：干扰下基于图加权暴露水平残差化的回归调整AI 解读

Estimating causal effects under interference is a common problem in social science and economics. However, it is challenging due to the complex dependency structure induced by network connections. In this paper, we propose GAUGER, a Generalized regression Adjustment framework via Graph-weighted Exposure-level Residualization for design-based causal inference under general interference. We first reveal a surprising mismatch between accuracy and efficiency in this setting:…

均值线性模型中朋友的朋友工具变量的实证挑战AI 解读

In the linear-in-means model, endogeneity arises naturally due to the reflection problem. A common solution is to use Instrumental Variables (IVs) based on higher-order network links, such as using friends-of-friends' characteristics. In this paper, we show that such instruments are unlikely to work well in many applied settings due to a specific sparse/dense-network mechanism: in extremely sparse networks, friends-of-friends instruments may become degenerate, while in…

溢出效应实验中的稳健信号最大化AI 解读

We study the optimal design and analysis of experiments for estimating spillover effects. Assuming a known (e.g., linear) exposure mapping, we characterize the treatment-assignment distribution and regression-based estimator that minimize worst-case asymptotic variance against a broad class of distributions of unobservables. The design problem yields an intuitive solution in which the planner trades off spillover signal strength against diffusion of spillover variation. The…

因果效应可识别性的粒度AI 解读

The classical notion of causal effect identifiability is defined in terms of treatment and outcome variables. In this paper, we consider the identifiability of state-based causal effects: how an intervention on a particular state of treatment variables affects a particular state of outcome variables. We demonstrate that state-based causal effects may be identifiable even when variable-based causal effects may not. Moreover, we show that this separation occurs only when…

利用网络数据改进对不可观测因素的控制AI 解读

This paper develops a method to conduct causal inference in the presence of unobserved confounders by leveraging networks with homophily, a frequently observed tendency to form edges with similar nodes. I introduce a concept of asymptotic homophily, according to which individuals' selectivity scales with the size of the potential connection pool. The resulting network formation model accommodates common empirical features such as homophily, degree heterogeneity, sparsity,…

CEDAR：自回归过程中的因果边发现AI 解读

We propose CEDAR (Causal Edge Discovery for Autoregressive Processes), a constraint-based method for lagged causal edge discovery in sparse autoregressive time series. CEDAR screens candidate cross-variable lags using AR(1)-residualized, U-centered distance correlation, then applies two targeted conditional-independence tests per significant cross-variable lag candidate and accepts at most one lag per ordered pair. A stable MCI pruning step removes indirect edges, and…

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,…

Ramsey 式空间交互函数线性检验AI 解读

We propose a computationally straightforward test for the linearity of a spatial interaction function. Such functions arise commonly, either as practitioner imposed specifications or due to optimizing behaviour by agents. Our conditional heteroskedasticity robust test is nonparametric, but based on the Lagrange Multiplier principle and reminiscent of the Ramsey RESET approach. This entails estimation only under the null hypothesis, which yields an easy to estimate linear…

教育回报从何而来？教育阶段转换与劳动力市场收益AI 解读

Conventional research on educational effects typically either employs a "years of schooling" measure of education, or dichotomizes attainment as a point-in-time treatment. Yet, such a conceptualization of education is misaligned with the sequential process by which individuals make educational transitions. In this paper, I propose a causal mediation framework for the study of educational effects on outcomes such as earnings. The framework considers the effect of a given…

折点聚集下的因果推断AI 解读

Kinked policies change marginal incentives at a threshold, and agents respond by adjusting the assignment variable that determines their treatment. The bunching literature uses this response to estimate the elasticity of the assignment variable; policymakers often care about effects on other outcomes. We develop a framework for estimating causal effects of kinked policies on outcomes beyond the assignment variable when agents can fully manipulate it. Average effects are…

随机微分方程的因果图、马尔可夫性质与 do 演算AI 解读

Stochastic differential equations (SDEs) are widely used to model continuous-time dynamical systems, but graphical causal models for them are not yet well-understood. We consider systems of causal SDEs that are equipped with an explicit causal semantics. We pose solvability conditions for systems of causal SDEs such that they have well-defined observational and interventional distributions - even after marginalisation - and provide a general class of Lipschitz semimartingale…

地球观测数据中的处理几何与因果识别AI 解读

A central task in conducting impact evaluations is determining who or what was exposed to a treatment, when, and to what degree. These questions can be especially complex in geospatial settings, where many reasonable definitions of exposure may exist. This chapter introduces treatment geometry as a core concept in geospatial impact evaluation (GIE): the spatial and temporal footprint of a treatment as represented in data. How this footprint is defined shapes identification…