论文检索

Two frequent approaches for identifying structural VARs are external instruments, which carry economic content but are often weak, and non-Gaussianity of the shocks, which provides statistical identification but carries no economic meaning. We combine the two strategies in a single generalized method of moments framework. This hybrid approach point-identifies the target shocks while also identifying the non-target shocks up to sign and ordering. Under suitable rank…

逐点 CATE 估计的极小极大速率：设计平滑度的作用AI 解读

We study the role of design smoothness in the minimax estimation of conditional average treatment effects at a fixed covariate point. For design densities bounded above and away from zero, without further regularity, we derive upper and lower risk bounds with an arbitrarily small gap in the convergence-rate exponent. Under uniform design, we obtain matching upper and lower bounds at interior points in the regime of low nuisance smoothness. These results show that rough…

Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) is a popular Bayesian ensemble model used in regression and classification analysis. Under this modeling framework, the regression function is approximated by an ensemble of decision trees, interpreted as weak learners. In this work, we propose a generalization of the BART model that has two main features: first, it automatically selects the number of decision trees using the given data; second, the model allows clusters of…

估计纵向因果剂量反应关系的贝叶斯框架AI 解读

Existing causal methods for time-varying exposure and time-varying confounding focus on estimating the average causal effect of a time-varying binary treatment on an end-of-study outcome, offering limited tools for characterizing marginal causal dose-response relationships under continuous exposures. We propose a scalable, nonparametric Bayesian framework for estimating marginal longitudinal causal dose-response functions with repeated outcome measurements. Our approach…

The conditional average treatment effect (CATE) is frequently estimated in clinical studies to refute a homogeneous treatment effect hypothesis. Under this regime, all patients making up the population experience identical benefit from a given treatment relative to a comparator. Uncovering heterogeneous treatment effects through inference about the CATE, however, requires that covariates truly modifying the treatment effect be reliably collected at baseline. CATE-based…

We study difference-in-differences designs in which all units are initially untreated and later receive heterogeneous, strictly positive treatment doses. When quasi-untreated units receive doses close to zero, a difference-in-difference estimand using those units as the control group identifies a weighted average treatment effect per unit of treatment, under a parallel-trends assumption. We develop a nonparametric estimator and bias-corrected confidence intervals for this…

伪面板事件研究：可信应用的计量经济学基础AI 解读

Event studies with panel data are widely used to estimate treatment effects. With repeated cross-sections, future treatment dates are unobserved for untreated individuals. Pseudo-panel event studies impute pre-treatment outcomes of the treated using matched untreated individuals. This paper establishes identification in such designs and characterizes bias when identification conditions fail. I show that the pseudo-panel regression is equivalent to weighted least squares with…

TMLE 与 AIPW 中样本分割选择何时重要：交叉拟合、目标化与重复AI 解读

Variants of targeted maximum likelihood estimation (TMLE) and augmented inverse-probability weighting (AIPW) with machine-learning nuisance models differ in which observations train them, how bias is corrected, and whether splits are repeated. In known-truth simulations of a binary-outcome average treatment effect, eight headline estimators shared each setting's library, inner folds and truncation bound; coverage differences were judged against a prespecified…

当处理发生溢出：时空因果效应估计的神经网络框架AI 解读

Real-world public health policies are often enacted by local jurisdictions, but their effects can ripple through connected populations. For causal evaluation, this creates a difficult spatiotemporal problem: intermittent policy updates create path-level treatments, and because spillover depends on neighboring treatment paths along with the focal-unit's own history, controlling time-varying confounding requires high-dimensional, multimodal information from both sources. To…

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…

We develop the first empirically implementable selective-inference framework for difference-in-differences with controls selected by pre-treatment fit. We construct confidence intervals for the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT), incorporating that selection and estimating the unknown full covariance from the same observations. Counterexamples establish undercoverage from Roth's fixed-comparison pretest adjustment and direct Gaussian-score application of…

基于秩的模型平均估计量用于平均处理效应AI 解读

Model averaging emerges as an attractive ensemble technique that strategically synthesizes all available information from potential candidate models to enhance estimation accuracy. Despite of having been widely practiced in various areas in biostatistics and economics, its application to causal inference is rather limited. We propose to estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) by forming the weighted combination of the robust rank-based estimators obtained from a series…

基于最优传输的稳定因果估计AI 解读

In observational studies, the overlap assumption, also called positivity, is frequently strained in practice. Limited overlap destabilizes widely used estimators such as inverse propensity weighting (IPW), whose variance depends on density ratios that explode as propensity scores approach zero or one. To address this challenge, we propose the Stable Transport Estimator (STE), an optimal transport-based approach for estimating average causal effects when overlap holds but…

记录链接存在歧义时的随机实验AI 解读

Randomized experiments are often linked to administrative data to measure outcomes, but coarse identifiers can leave multiple administrative records consistent with each experimental unit. We show that unbiased estimation of the sample average treatment effect is possible without resolving these ambiguous links or specifying an outcome model. Our key linkage requirement is that the true administrative outcome is contained among the candidate outcomes for each experimental…

重尾模型中的基于比率的因果发现AI 解读

In many complex systems, such as river networks and financial markets, extreme events propagate from causes to their effects, and the largest observations carry the most information about the underlying causal structure. Existing methods for causal discovery in extremes, however, are tailored to specific mechanisms, such as linear or max-linear models. This work develops causal discovery for heavy-tailed homogeneous structural causal models, a flexible class that contains…

随机试验的比较：试验参与效应与效应迁移AI 解读

Disagreements between randomized trials that address the same causal question pose challenges for the interpretation and synthesis of evidence. We sketch a causal framework for comparing the results of randomized trials that explicitly accommodates the possibility of trial engagement effects. Using counterfactual outcomes defined under joint interventions on treatment assignment and trial-related actions, we compare trial-native treatment effects with the effects transported…

社会网络数据中处理效应的识别与估计：当社会连接存在混杂时AI 解读

In observational network data, the adoption of a treatment and the formation of social ties often depend on the same characteristics that affect outcomes. We propose a generalized propensity score for each unit's effective treatment, built from a model for treatment assignment and a dyadic model for network formation, which may include latent node heterogeneity. The score is marginalized over the network given covariates rather than conditioned on the realized network, and…

Researchers often report an estimate and confidence interval only if a specification test does not reject - for example, only if a pre-trend test supports a difference-in-differences design. Does this make the reported confidence interval less reliable? We show that when the identifying assumptions hold, the answer is no: conditional on passing the pre-test, the confidence interval may over-cover but cannot under-cover. When the assumptions fail, pre-testing can reduce…

IV-LASSO 的工具变量字典与惩罚选择AI 解读

Estimating the first stage of an instrumental variables (IV) model with the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) requires choosing a dictionary of technical instruments and a penalty level. First-order asymptotic theory offers no guidance on these choices, as any consistent implementation yields a structural parameter estimator with the same limiting distribution. In finite samples, however, these choices can have a substantial impact on the resulting…

预测处理效应分布：协变量调整方法AI 解读

Important questions for impact evaluation require knowledge not only of average effects, but of the distribution of treatment effects. The inability to observe individual counterfactuals makes answering these empirical questions challenging. I propose an inference approach for points of the distribution of treatment effects that uses predicted counterfactuals through covariate adjustment. I provide finite-sample valid inference using sample-splitting and asymptotically valid…

嵌套工具变量分析：转换者平均处理效应及可推广性AI 解读

Instrumental variables (IVs) are widely used to estimate causal effects from non-randomized data. A canonical example is a randomized trial with noncompliance, in which the randomized treatment assignment serves as an IV for the non-ignorable treatment received. Under a monotonicity assumption, a valid IV nonparametrically identifies the average treatment effect among a latent complier subgroup, whose generalizability is often under debate. In many studies, there exist…

复杂（准）实验设计下的简单标准误AI 解读

We develop standard errors for estimates of causal effects in settings where the distribution of treatment exposures is known but potentially exhibits complicated dependence patterns across units. Such dependence arises, for example, in settings with spillovers/interference across units or when the treatment assignment is spatially correlated. Our variance estimator generalizes several properties of the Neyman variance estimator for completely randomized experiments to…

Traditional machine learning relies on explicit models and domain assumptions, often limiting flexibility and interpretability. We introduce a "model-free" framework of instance-based learning using surprisal (information theoretic uncertainty) to directly analyze and perform inferences from raw data, eliminating distribution modeling, reducing bias, and enabling efficient updates including direct edits and deletion of training data. By quantifying relevance through…

克隆—删失—加权方法的形式化与一致性AI 解读

Target trial emulation has become a standard framework for causal inference from observational data. Within this paradigm, the clone-censor-weight (CCW) methodology provides a practical way to deal with complex treatment and adherence definitions when treatment regimes are not distinguishable at baseline. Despite its increasing use, the statistical interpretation of CCW remains limited. In this work, we formalize the CCW methodology from a statistical viewpoint based on…