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局部投影还是 VAR？宏观经济学者入门指南AI 解读

What should applied macroeconomists know about local projection (LP) and vector autoregression (VAR) impulse response estimators? The two methods share the same estimand, but in finite samples lie on opposite ends of a bias-variance trade-off. While the low bias of LPs comes at a quite steep variance cost, this cost must be paid to achieve robust uncertainty assessments. Hence, when the goal is to convey what can be learned about dynamic causal effects from the data, VARs…

超越任意重复次数：因果推断模拟设计的原则性方法AI 解读

Evaluation of novel treatment effect estimators frequently relies on simulation studies lacking formal statistical comparisons and using arbitrary numbers of replications ($J$). This hinders reproducibility and efficiency. We propose the Test-Informed Simulation Count Algorithm (TISCA) to address these shortcomings. TISCA integrates Welch's t-tests with power analysis, iteratively running simulations until a pre-specified power (e.g., 0.8) is achieved for detecting a…

纵向离散结局研究中暴露测量误差的校正AI 解读

Environmental epidemiologists are often interested in estimating the effect of time-varying functions of the exposure history on health outcomes. However, the individual exposure measurements that constitute the history upon which an exposure history function is constructed are usually subject to measurement errors. To obtain unbiased estimates of the effects of such mismeasured functions in longitudinal studies with discrete outcomes, a method applicable to the main…

多时期分布型双重差分模型AI 解读

Researchers are often interested in evaluating the impact of a policy on the entire (or specific parts of the) distribution of the outcome of interest. In this paper, I provide a method to recover the whole distribution of the untreated potential outcome for the treated group in non-experimental settings with staggered treatment adoption by generalizing the existing quantile treatment effects on the treated (QTT) estimator proposed by Callaway and Li (2019). Besides the QTT,…

利用观察数据学习最优动态处理规则AI 解读

Public policies and medical interventions often involve dynamic treatment assignments, in which individuals receive a sequence of interventions over multiple stages. We study the statistical learning of optimal dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) that determine the optimal treatment assignment for each individual at each stage based on their evolving history. We propose a novel, doubly robust, classification-based method for learning the optimal DTR from observational data…

情境多臂老虎机实验后的有效统计推断AI 解读

We establish an asymptotic framework for the statistical analysis of the stochastic contextual multi-armed bandit problem (CMAB), which is widely employed in adaptively randomized experiments across various fields. While algorithms for maximizing rewards or, equivalently, minimizing regret have received considerable attention, our focus centers on statistical inference with adaptively collected data under the CMAB model. To this end we derive the limit experiment (in the…

分布增强的边际敏感性模型及其界限AI 解读

For sensitivity analysis against unmeasured confounding, we build on the marginal sensitivity model (MSM) and propose a new model, deMSM, by incorporating a second constraint on the shift of potential outcome distributions caused by unmeasured confounders in addition to the constraint on the shift of treatment probabilities. We show that deMSM leads to interpretable sharp bounds of common causal parameters and tightens the corresponding MSM bounds. Moreover, the sharp bounds…

气候变化检测与归因中的正则化指纹法：线性最优权重矩阵AI 解读

Climate change detection and attribution play a central role in establishing the causal influence of human activities on global warming. The dominant framework, optimal fingerprinting, is a linear errors-in-variables model in which each covariate is subject to measurement error with covariance proportional to that of the regression error. The reliability of such analyses depends critically on accurate inference of the regression coefficients. The optimal weight matrix for…

在 2SLS 第一阶段使用机器学习：来自偏差分解与模拟的实践指导AI 解读

Machine learning (ML) primarily evolved to solve "prediction problems." The first stage of two-stage least squares (2SLS) is a prediction problem, suggesting potential gains from ML first-stage assistance. However, little guidance exists on when ML helps 2SLS$\unicode{x2014}$or when it hurts. We investigate the implications of inserting ML into 2SLS, decomposing the bias into three informative components. Mechanically, ML-in-2SLS procedures face issues common to prediction…

含潜在混杂的汇总因果图中微观总效应的可识别性：前门准则扩展AI 解读

Conducting experiments to estimate total effects can be challenging due to cost, ethical concerns, or practical limitations. As an alternative, researchers often rely on causal graphs to determine whether these effects can be identified from observational data. Identifying total effects in fully specified causal graphs has received considerable attention, with Pearl's front-door criterion enabling the identification of total effects in the presence of latent confounding even…

从假设情景到洞见：因果推断与可解释人工智能中的反事实AI 解读

Counterfactuals play a pivotal role in the two distinct data science fields of causal inference (CI) and explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). While the core idea behind counterfactuals remains the same in both fields--the examination of what would have happened under different circumstances--there are key differences in how they are used and interpreted. We introduce a formal definition that encompasses the multi-faceted concept of the counterfactual in CI and XAI. We…

总体层面因果效应度量可迁移性的统一框架AI 解读

Generalization methods offer a powerful solution to one of the key drawbacks of randomized controlled trials (RCTs): their limited representativeness. By enabling the transport of treatment effect estimates to target populations subject to distributional shifts, these methods are increasingly recognized as the future of meta-analysis, the current gold standard in evidence-based medicine. Yet most existing approaches focus on the risk difference, overlooking the diverse range…

稳健因果估计的校准策略：倾向得分估计量的理论与实证分析AI 解读

The partitioning of data for estimation and calibration critically impacts the performance of propensity score based estimators like inverse probability weighting (IPW) and double/debiased machine learning (DML) frameworks. We extend recent advances in calibration techniques for propensity score estimation, improving the robustness of propensity scores in challenging settings such as limited overlap, small sample sizes, or unbalanced data. Our contributions are twofold:…

因果启发的非线性模型稳健性：基于表征学习AI 解读

Distributional robustness is a central goal of prediction algorithms due to the prevalent distribution shifts in real-world data. The prediction model aims to minimize the worst-case risk among a class of distributions, a.k.a., an uncertainty set. Causality provides a modeling framework with a rigorous robustness guarantee in the above sense, where the uncertainty set is data-driven rather than pre-specified as in traditional distributional robustness optimization. However,…

并非所有分布漂移都相同：细粒度稳健共形推断AI 解读

We introduce a fine-grained framework for uncertainty quantification of predictive models under distributional shifts. This framework distinguishes the shift in covariate distributions from that in the conditional relationship between the outcome ($Y$) and the covariates ($X$). We propose to reweight the training samples to adjust for an identifiable covariate shift while protecting against worst-case conditional distribution shift bounded in an $f$-divergence ball. Based on…

通过分区估计处理伤害率AI 解读

In causal inference with binary outcomes, there is a growing interest in estimation of treatment harm rate (THR), which is a measure of treatment risk and reveals treatment effect heterogeneity in a subpopulation. The THR is generally non-identifiable even for randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and existing works focus primarily on the estimation of the THR under either untestable identification or ambiguous model assumptions. We develop a class of partitioning-based…

合理处理效应路径的估计与可视化AI 解读

We consider point estimation and inference for the treatment effect path of a policy. Examples include dynamic treatment effects in microeconomics, impulse response functions in macroeconomics, and event study paths in finance. We present two sets of plausible bounds to quantify and visualize the uncertainty associated with this object. Both plausible bounds are often substantially tighter than traditional confidence intervals, and can provide useful insights even when…

函数型处理的因果效应AI 解读

We study the causal effect with a functional treatment variable, where practical applications often arise in neuroscience, biomedical sciences, etc. Previous research concerning the effect of a functional variable on an outcome is typically restricted to exploring correlation rather than causality. The generalized propensity score, which is often used to calibrate the selection bias, is not directly applicable to a functional treatment variable due to a lack of definition of…

预测模型直接原因的建模与发现AI 解读

We introduce a causal modeling framework that captures the input-output behavior of predictive models (e.g., machine learning models). The framework enables us to identify features that directly cause the predictions, which has broad implications for data collection and model evaluation. We then present sound and complete algorithms for discovering direct causes (from data) under some assumptions. Furthermore, we propose a novel independence rule that can be integrated with…

分层随机实验中的锐方差估计与因果自助法AI 解读

Randomized experiments are the gold standard for estimating treatment effects, and randomization serves as a reasoned basis for inference. In widely used stratified randomized experiments, randomization-based finite-population asymptotic theory enables valid inference for the average treatment effect, relying on normal approximation and a Neyman-type conservative variance estimator. However, when the sample size is small or the outcomes are skewed, the Neyman-type variance…

通过重要性加权扩散蒸馏进行因果估计的生成框架AI 解读

Estimating individualized treatment effects from observational data is a central challenge in causal inference, largely due to covariate imbalance and confounding bias from non-randomized treatment assignment. While inverse probability weighting (IPW) is a well-established solution to this problem, its integration into modern deep learning frameworks remains limited. In this work, we propose Importance-Weighted Diffusion Distillation (IWDD), a novel generative framework that…

利用偏相关的未观测混杂优化敏感性分析AI 解读

Causal inference necessarily relies upon untestable assumptions; hence, it is crucial to assess the robustness of obtained results to violations of identification assumptions. However, such sensitivity analysis is only occasionally undertaken in practice, as many existing methods require analytically tractable solutions and their results are often difficult to interpret. We take a more flexible approach to sensitivity analysis and view it as a constrained stochastic…

结局测量不同的研究整合用于因果推断时的警示AI 解读

Data integration approaches are increasingly used to enhance the efficiency and generalizability of studies. However, a key limitation of these methods is the assumption that outcome measures are identical across datasets -- an assumption that often does not hold in practice. Consider the following opioid use disorder (OUD) studies: the XBOT trial and the POAT study, both evaluating the effect of medications for OUD on withdrawal symptom severity (not the primary outcome of…

具有因果保证的高效小型智能体评估计算理论AI 解读

In order to reduce the cost of experimental evaluation for agents, we introduce a computational theory of evaluation for mini agents: build evaluation model to accelerate the evaluation procedures. We prove upper bounds of generalized error and generalized causal effect error of given evaluation models for infinite agents. We also prove efficiency, and consistency to estimated causal effect from deployed agents to evaluation metric by prediction. To learn evaluation models,…