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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…

用于处理效应估计的预测驱动数据融合AI 解读

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) identify treatment effects without confounding but are often small, whereas observational studies (OBS) are large but may be confounded. Many estimators combining a small RCT with a large OBS have been developed for the average treatment effect (ATE) and the conditional ATE (CATE). However, existing ATE estimators either make assumptions on the OBS or do not borrow enough power from them. The CATE has been studied less than the ATE.…

Missingness in variables that define study eligibility criteria is a seldom addressed challenge in electronic health record (EHR)-based settings. Patients with incomplete eligibility information are typically excluded from analysis without consideration of the (implicit) assumptions being made, leaving study conclusions subject to potential selection bias. In an effort to ascertain eligibility for more patients, researchers may look back further in time prior to study…

非精确匹配何时能在无需调整的情况下保证平衡与有效推断？AI 解读

One-to-one matching without replacement is a classical approach to constructing comparable treated and control samples in the design of observational studies. It pairs each treated unit with a distinct control while minimizing a covariate distance objective. With continuous covariates, the matched pairs generally remain inexact, which contributes to bias in downstream analysis. Its key theoretical properties, such as the resulting imbalance between matched pairs and when it…

潜在类别对处理效应的调节AI 解读

Many treatments have effects that plausibly vary by latent classes. For example, the effect of personalized video recommendations may be stronger for users who seek a new discovery than for users seeking to rewatch something familiar. In the context of user journeys on digital platforms, we can conceptualize user moods as dynamic latent states that lead to distinct action distributions. Because mood is unobserved, we infer it from a user's pre-treatment actions using a…

存在异质性时利用混合先验自适应结合随机试验与外部对照AI 解读

When resources are limited in a randomized trial, a common strategy is to augment data from the control arm with external controls. We propose a hybrid group sequential Bayesian design that uses this approach to compare time-to-event distributions. The design allows between-treatment effects to differ between patient subgroups, and adaptively combines subgroups that have similar hazard functions. The aim is to reduce the control arm sample size without compromising the…

弱信号下的政策学习AI 解读

Policy learning in digital experimentation faces three challenges: weak signal-to-noise ratios, rich covariate spaces, and massive data volumes. We formalize this regime by modeling treatment-effect estimates from increasingly fine covariate partitions as Gaussian observations with bounded signal-to-noise ratios. We establish that, in general, the optimal treatment policy is not learnable in this setting. Even learning the optimal policy value suffers from impractically slow…

We study nonparametric inference for a continuous-treatment causal dose-response curve and its first derivative under unmeasured confounding, using treatment- and outcome-inducing proxies. We establish a proximal doubly robust pseudo-outcome whose conditional mean given treatment equals the dose-response curve whenever either bridge function is correctly specified. Their (smoothed) efficient influence function representations lead to cross-fitted local-polynomial estimators…

This paper presents a causal decision framework for list-price elasticities in intermediated retail channels, where estimates are confounded by promotions, competitor moves and shopkeeper pass-through. Rather than forcing a number when the evidence is ambiguous, the system treats abstention (Wait) as an active diagnostic output. Built on Double Machine Learning and conformal prediction, it evaluates whether conditions exist to act on a recommended price or whether…

借助知识迁移增强代表性不足子群体的工具变量分析AI 解读

Instrumental variable (IV) analysis in underrepresented target populations suffers from low statistical efficiency and weak IV bias due to limited sample size. Leveraging external knowledge from a source population with larger samples offers an appealing solution to this problem. We propose in this paper the KNowledge-powered IV Estimator for underrepresented Subpopulations (KNIVES), a framework that enhances the IV analysis for underrepresented subpopulations by…

自删失模型下信息性缺失的纵向因果推断AI 解读

Longitudinal observational data are often subject to informative missingness. For example, in healthcare research using electronic health records, covariates and outcomes are measured only when patients interact with the healthcare system. Whether these data are observed usually depends on the unobserved variable values themselves, introducing a common form of data missing not at random. We develop identification and estimation methods for the effects of longitudinal…

重加权分布中选择直接原因的评分方法AI 解读

Scoring methods based on the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) are commonly used for model selection tasks such as choosing features in a regression model or learning directed acyclic graphs from data. In certain model classes, model selection based on the BIC is consistent. However, since the BIC is based on the observed likelihood function, it does not apply directly to reweighted distributions arising in causal inference, missing data, and domain shift applications.…

通过因果数据融合衡量礼品卡项目的增量收入AI 解读

Businesses regularly offer gift card programs to drive customer spending and increase engagement. A central question is how much incremental revenue these programs generate, and which channels drive it most efficiently. Measuring the incremental revenue associated with a gift card program is a challenging problem in causal inference, requiring a firm to infer how much each customer would have spent if they never received a gift card. Observational data on past customer…

缺失的角点：尖锐因果界何时无法组合AI 解读

Sharp bounds on two potential-outcome means need not combine into sharp bounds on their difference. We characterize exactly when composition is guaranteed across environments sharing a joint potential-outcome law. For binary treatment and outcome, fix strict selection-probability bounds and interior treatment propensities. Subtracting the full model's sharp mean intervals gives sharp average-treatment-effect bounds for every compatible observed law if and only if the…

噪声即信号：相关抽样误差为代理指标选择提供排序信息AI 解读

North-star metrics such as customer lifetime value are often too slow and noisy to decide a short A/B test. Teams therefore rely on a proxy metric, commonly chosen by how closely its effects tracked the north star's across past experiments. Validating that choice, or any method for making it, is hard: the only benchmark is the noisy north star, and the number of available past experiments is limited. In addition, proxy and north-star effects are estimated on the same…

Causal inference in continuous-time sequential decision problems is challenged by hidden confounding and partially observed states. We show that, under explicit structural assumptions, observability of the latent state enables identification of dynamic treatment effects through a continuous-time conditional front-door adjustment, even in the presence of hidden confounding. We derive a general adjustment formula and show that it reduces to a tractable state-space formula when…

结果选择下用于目标因果推断的协作表征AI 解读

Estimating causal effects with missing outcomes requires learning outcome, exposure, and selection models. Flexible propensity learners can predict treatment or missingness well while worsening target estimation by emphasizing instruments, weak-overlap regions, or variation unrelated to outcome-regression bias. We propose a collaborative representation-based targeted learning method for recovered average treatment effects under outcome selection. The method learns…

在线实验的设计驱动推断：证据收集、检验与估计的联合最优性AI 解读

Online multifactorial experiments requires early stopping for practically negligible effects while controlling false stopping under continuous monitoring and retaining precise treatment-effect estimation. We develop a design-driven framework that chooses allocation and the evidence rule jointly, treating allocation as evidence collection and testing and estimation as complementary uses of the same evidence. For multifactor experiments with nuisance block effects and…

计数数据的去偏机器学习：基于神经网络的部分线性 Poisson 模型AI 解读

We develop a novel debiased machine learning (DML) estimator to analyze count data, which are common in clinical or biomedical studies. Specifically, we estimate the effect of a binary treatment on count outcomes using a partially linear Poisson model. A key advantage of this model is that it represents the complex covariate structure through a nuisance function, which is estimated flexibly using neural networks. We use a Neyman-orthogonal score function to construct the…

边处理与节点结果的网络实验AI 解读

We present a methodology for analyzing node-level outcomes while experimenting with edge-level treatments in a population connected by an undirected graph. Under our design, nodes are randomly assigned to test or control, and each edge inherits the treatment of its endpoints, with conflicts resolved by randomization. We use each node's assigned status as an instrument for its treatment exposure. We show that the Wald estimator is consistent for the global average treatment…

非线性时间序列中的函数值因果影响AI 解读

Causal discovery in time series is increasingly performed using nonlinear machine-learning models, yet the resulting causal relationships are almost always summarized by scalar edge scores. We argue that this practice obscures the true object learned by nonlinear autoregressive models: a state-dependent function whose effect varies across regimes, magnitudes, and contexts. We formalize function-valued causal influence for additive, contribution-decomposable architectures and…