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通过统计功效进行因果发现AI 解读

Causal discovery methods aim to infer causal direction from observational data. Functional causal discovery approaches use structural asymmetries to identify causal directionality but rely on strong modeling assumptions and provide limited tools for uncertainty quantification. We introduce Causal Discovery via Statistical Power (CDSP), a statistical inference framework that connects causal direction estimation with statistical power and enables uncertainty quantification.…

非随机研究中二元结局因果推断方法的选择手册：模拟研究AI 解读

Applied researchers in biomedicine and related fields are often interested in estimating the causal effect of a treatment or intervention. Although randomized clinical trials are considered the gold standard for establishing causal effects, they are not always feasible, and real-world data may represent the only available source of evidence. In such settings, causal effects must be estimated using statistical methods applied to observational data. Over the last few decades,…

永远不晚：潜在结果框架的完全随机化更新AI 解读

In the classic potential outcome framework, the local average treatment effect (LATE) and its identification via an instrumental variable are stated in a deterministic setting at the individual level: each individual has settled potential outcomes such as ``cured if treated''. Several authors have proposed working instead with \emph{stochastic} potential outcomes -- counterfactual probabilities of the form ``the chance of being cured if treated'' -- but the integration of…

无重叠情况下的平均处理效应界AI 解读

The average treatment effect (ATE), the mean difference in potential outcomes under treatment and control, is a canonical causal effect. Overlap, which says that all subjects have non-zero probability of either treatment status, is necessary to identify and estimate the ATE. When overlap fails, the standard solution is to change the estimand, and target a trimmed effect in a subpopulation satisfying overlap. When the outcome is bounded, we demonstrate that this compromise is…

事件时间终点缺失数据的临界点敏感性分析：模型法与经验法AI 解读

Treatment policy estimands are frequently favored by regulators, as they assess the effect of treatment assignment regardless of post-randomization events. Despite best efforts, missing data due to study discontinuation cannot be fully avoided and, for time-to-event endpoints, typically manifests as right censoring. Study discontinuation is often more likely following intercurrent events, particularly when it coincides with treatment discontinuation, raising concerns about…

混频数据下的合成控制方法AI 解读

Mixed-frequency data, where variables are observed at different temporal resolutions, commonly occur in economic and financial studies. Classical synthetic control methods (SCM) are ill-suited for such data, often necessitating aggregation or prefiltering that may discard valuable information. This paper proposes a novel Mixed-Frequency Synthetic Control Method (MF-SCM) to integrate mixed-frequency data into the synthetic control framework effectively. We develop a flexible…

通过双重随机化推断检验双重差分系数的显著性AI 解读

This article develops a significance test for the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimator based on dual-margin randomization, in which both the treatment and time indicators are independently permuted to generate an empirical null distribution of the DiD estimator. We situate the proposal explicitly within the landscape of existing inference methods for the DiD estimator, including OLS-based $t$-tests, heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors, cluster-robust variance…

冰淇淋不会导致溺水：评测大语言模型应对因果推断统计陷阱的能力AI 解读

Reliable causal inference is essential for making decisions in high-stakes areas like medicine, economics, and public policy. However, it remains unclear whether large language models (LLMs) can handle rigorous and trustworthy statistical causal inference. Current benchmarks usually involve simplified tasks. For example, these tasks might only ask LLMs to identify semantic causal relationships or draw conclusions directly from raw data. As a result, models may overlook…

有序结果的因果推断：基于 Copula 的识别、估计与敏感性分析AI 解读

In causal inference with ordinal outcomes, several interpretable estimands are functions of the probability that the potential outcome under one treatment is larger than that under another treatment for the same unit. This probability depends on the joint distribution of both potential outcomes and is generally not identifiable. Existing work has focused on sharp bounds of this probability based on partial identification, but bounds are often too wide to be informative. We…

乘法准工具变量模型AI 解读

We introduce the Multiplicative Quasi-Instrumental Variable (MQIV) model, a framework for causal inference with unmeasured confounding that leverages an instrument that may be imperfectly exogenous. We allow the candidate quasi-instrument to have a direct effect on the outcome not mediated by the treatment, thus violating the standard IV exclusion restriction. We establish nonparametric identification of the population average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) under a…

乘法工具变量模型AI 解读

The instrumental variable (IV) design is a common approach to address hidden confounding bias. For validity, an IV must impact the outcome only through its association with the treatment. In addition, IV identification has required a homogeneity condition such as monotonicity or no unmeasured common effect modifier between the additive effect of the treatment on the outcome, and that of the IV on the treatment. In this work, we introduce the Multiplicative Instrumental…

平行趋势违反时双重差分前匹配的偏差—方差权衡AI 解读

Quasi-experimental causal inference methods have become central in empirical operations management for guiding managerial decisions. Among these, empiricists utilize the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) estimator, which relies on the parallel trends assumption. To improve its plausibility, researchers often match treated and control units before applying DiD, with the intuition that matched groups are more likely to evolve similarly absent treatment. Existing work that…

尾部依赖时间序列异方差高分位回归的生成式同质性检验AI 解读

We consider a high quantile homogeneity test to determine whether a certain set of explanatory variables has homogeneous effects on different high quantiles of the response variable in the tail. To accommodate for situations under both the null and the alternative, the auxiliary process in this case may no longer be treated as stationary, and the problem requires a joint analysis of both homoscedastic and heteroskedastic high quantiles. For this, we develop a novel Bahadur…

人口干预中间接效应与干预变量效应的近端推断AI 解读

Unmeasured confounding, unethical exposure, and ill-defined interventions pose significant challenges to evaluating policy-relevant mediation estimands in medicine and public health. In observational studies involving harmful exposures, the population intervention indirect effect (PIIE) is often more salient than the natural indirect effect, as the latter relies on hypothetical interventions that may be ethically or practically unfeasible. While the PIIE can be identified…

扩展 Wasserstein-GAN 因果分布学习：无密度估计与极小极大最优性AI 解读

Distributional causal inference requires estimating not only average treatment effects but also interventional outcome distributions, including quantiles, tail risks, and policy-dependent uncertainty. As a method for distributional causal inference, generative adversarial network (GAN)-based counterfactual methods are flexible tools for this task. However, these methods have several limitations. First, the objectives of certain techniques do not coincide with the statistical…

分布合成控制的渐近性质AI 解读

As an alternative to synthetic control, the distributional Synthetic Control (DSC) proposed by Gunsilius (2023) provides estimates for quantile treatment effect and thus enabling researchers to comprehensively understand the impact of interventions in causal inference. But the asymptotic properties of DSC have not been built. In this paper, we first establish the DSC estimator's asymptotic optimality in the essence that the treatment effect estimator given by DSC achieves…

通过 Mallows 型模型平均实现广义最优参数迁移学习AI 解读

In many economic applications, multiple source datasets are available, but their effective combination is challenging due to heterogeneity across datasets. To address this problem, we study a parameter-transfer framework that shares only source-side estimates and propose a Mallows-type model averaging method for combining target and source models in the parametric setting. The weights are obtained from a Mallows-type criterion that is unbiased for the target prediction risk…

两类代理变量因果识别方法的比较AI 解读

Identifying causal effects in the presence of unmeasured variables is a fundamental challenge in causal inference, for which proxy variable methods have emerged as a powerful solution. We contrast two major approaches in this framework: (1) bridge equation methods, which leverage solutions to integral equations to recover causal targets, and (2) array decomposition methods, which recover latent factors used to identify counterfactual quantities via eigendecomposition tasks.…

基于 e 值的序贯随机化检验及试验监测AI 解读

Sequential monitoring of randomized trials traditionally relies on parametric assumptions or asymptotic approximations. We discuss a family of nonparametric sequential tests - collectively called e-RT - for binary, event-only, and continuous endpoints. All active variants derive validity from the randomization mechanism. Using a betting framework, each test constructs a test martingale by sequentially wagering on randomized assignments or observed event labels before using…

匹配观察研究中效应修饰的自适应发现AI 解读

Understanding effect modification -- how treatment effects vary across subpopulations -- is practically important in observational studies, as it helps identify which subgroups are likely to benefit from a given treatment. In this paper, we study the discovery of effect modification in matched observational studies, where each treated unit may be matched to multiple controls. We develop a finite-sample valid procedure for identifying and selecting covariate-interpretable…

近端路径特定效应推断AI 解读

Causal mediation analysis has been extended to estimate path-specific effects with multiple intermediate variables, isolating treatment effects through a mediator of interest while excluding pathways through its ancestors. Such analyses address bias from recanting witnesses, i.e., treatment-induced mediator-outcome confounders. However, existing methods typically rely on stringent assumptions precluding general unmeasured confounding, which are often violated in practice. In…

因果发现应拥抱群体智慧AI 解读

This paper argues for recognizing an emerging paradigm of causal learning by wisdom of the crowd. Recent developments in government, industry, and research point to the rise of decentralized and crowd-based approaches within causal modeling, where causal knowledge distributed across many contributors can be systematically elicited and integrated with causal learning workflows. In this paradigm, causal learning becomes a distributed decision-making problem: each participant…

可迁移分位数处理效应的嵌套敏感性包络AI 解读

We study target-population quantile treatment effects when a source study may have unmeasured treatment confounding and may not transport to a target population after conditioning on observed covariates. The observed data consist of a source sample with treatment, outcome and covariates, and a target sample with covariates only. We impose two marginal sensitivity restrictions: an odds-ratio bound \(\Gam\) for source treatment assignment and a conditional likelihood-ratio…

从异质性效应中提取机制：中介分析的识别策略AI 解读

Understanding causal mechanisms is crucial for explaining and generalizing empirical phenomena. Causal mediation analysis offers statistical techniques to quantify the mediation effects. Although numerous methods have been developed for causal inference more broadly, the methodological toolkit for causal mediation analysis remains limited. Current methods often require multiple ignorability assumptions or sophisticated research designs. In this paper, we introduce an…