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连续事件时间结局中特定时点干预效应的目标最大似然估计AI 解读

Targeted maximum likelihood estimation is a general methodology combining flexible ensemble learning and semiparametric efficiency theory in a two-step procedure for estimation of causal parameters. Proposed targeted maximum likelihood procedures for survival and competing risks analysis have so far focused on events taken values in discrete time. We here present a targeted maximum likelihood estimation procedure for event times that take values in R+. We focuson the…

疫情期间使用双向固定效应模型评估政策的局限AI 解读

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple studies rely on two-way fixed effects (FE) models to assess the impact of mitigation policies on health outcomes. Building on the SIRD model of disease transmission, I show that FE models tend to be misspecified for three reasons. First, despite misleading common trends in the pre-treatment period, the parallel trends assumption generally does not hold. Second, heterogeneity in infection rates and infected populations across…

动态非对称因果性检验及其应用AI 解读

Testing for causation, defined as the preceding impact of the past values of one variable on the current value of another one when all other pertinent information is accounted for, is increasingly utilized in empirical research of the time-series data in different scientific disciplines. A relatively recent extension of this approach has been allowing for potential asymmetric impacts since it is harmonious with the way reality operates in many cases according to Hatemi-J…

收益管理系统的改进能否提高收入？AI 解读

Airlines and other industries have been making use of sophisticated Revenue Management Systems to maximize revenue for decades. While improving the different components of these systems has been the focus of numerous studies, estimating the impact of such improvements on the revenue has been overlooked in the literature despite its practical importance. Indeed, quantifying the benefit of a change in a system serves as support for investment decisions. This is a challenging…

最大线性贝叶斯网络的马尔可夫等价性AI 解读

Max-linear Bayesian networks have emerged as highly applicable models for causal inference via extreme value data. However, conditional independence (CI) for max-linear Bayesian networks behaves differently than for classical Gaussian Bayesian networks. We establish the parallel between the two theories via tropicalization, and establish the surprising result that the Markov equivalence classes for max-linear Bayesian networks coincide with the ones obtained by regular CI.…

合成式双重差分AI 解读

We consider estimating the conditional average treatment effect for everyone by eliminating confounding and selection bias. Unfortunately, randomized clinical trials (RCTs) eliminate confounding but impose strict exclusion criteria that prevent sampling of the entire clinical population. Observational datasets are more inclusive but suffer from confounding. We therefore analyze RCT and observational data simultaneously in order to extract the strengths of each. Our solution…

利用机器学习推断处理特定生存曲线AI 解读

In the absence of data from a randomized trial, researchers often aim to use observational data to draw causal inference about the effect of a treatment on a time-to-event outcome. In this context, interest often focuses on the treatment-specific survival curves; that is, the survival curves were the entire population under study to be assigned to receive the treatment or not. Under certain causal conditions, including that all confounders of the treatment-outcome…

局部平均处理效应估计对单调性违背的敏感性AI 解读

In this paper, we develop a method to assess the sensitivity of local average treatment effect estimates to potential violations of the monotonicity assumption of Imbens and Angrist (1994). We parameterize the degree to which monotonicity is violated using two sensitivity parameters: the first one determines the share of defiers in the population, and the second one measures differences in the distributions of outcomes between compliers and defiers. For each pair of values…

基于上下文老虎机数据自适应加权的离策略评估AI 解读

It has become increasingly common for data to be collected adaptively, for example using contextual bandits. Historical data of this type can be used to evaluate other treatment assignment policies to guide future innovation or experiments. However, policy evaluation is challenging if the target policy differs from the one used to collect data, and popular estimators, including doubly robust (DR) estimators, can be plagued by bias, excessive variance, or both. In particular,…

复杂原因的可操作化：中介分析的务实视角AI 解读

We examine the problem of causal response estimation for complex objects (e.g., text, images, genomics). In this setting, classical \emph{atomic} interventions are often not available (e.g., changes to characters, pixels, DNA base-pairs). Instead, we only have access to indirect or \emph{crude} interventions (e.g., enrolling in a writing program, modifying a scene, applying a gene therapy). In this work, we formalize this problem and provide an initial solution. Given a…

线性因果模型中因果发现的不确定性推断AI 解读

Structural causal models postulate noisy functional relations among a set of interacting variables. The causal structure underlying each such model is naturally represented by a directed graph whose edges indicate for each variable which other variables it causally depends upon. Under a number of different model assumptions, it has been shown that this causal graph and, thus also, causal effects are identifiable from mere observational data. For these models, practical…

随机试验中二元结局个体化处理效应预测教程AI 解读

Randomized trials typically estimate average relative treatment effects, but decisions on the benefit of a treatment are possibly better informed by more individualized predictions of the absolute treatment effect. In case of a binary outcome, these predictions of absolute individualized treatment effect require knowledge of the individual's risk without treatment and incorporation of a possibly differential treatment effect (i.e. varying with patient characteristics). In…

利用倾向得分固定效应调整边际结构模型中的未测混杂AI 解读

Marginal structural models are a popular tool for investigating the effects of time-varying treatments, but they require an assumption of no unobserved confounders between the treatment and outcome. With observational data, this assumption may be difficult to maintain, and in studies with panel data, many researchers use fixed effects models to purge the data of time-constant unmeasured confounding. Unfortunately, traditional linear fixed effects models are not suitable for…

利用多环境 Knockoff 过滤寻找一致关联AI 解读

This paper develops a method based on model-X knockoffs to find conditional associations that are consistent across diverse environments, controlling the false discovery rate. The motivation for this problem is that large data sets may contain numerous associations that are statistically significant and yet misleading, as they are induced by confounders or sampling imperfections. However, associations consistently replicated under different conditions may be more…

利用元学习辨识因果图结构AI 解读

We explore the usage of meta-learning to derive the causal direction between variables by optimizing over a measure of distribution simplicity. We incorporate a stochastic graph representation which includes latent variables and allows for more generalizability and graph structure expression. Our model is able to learn causal direction indicators for complex graph structures despite effects of latent confounders. Further, we explore robustness of our method with respect to…

利用控制变量法进行多来源因果推断AI 解读

While many areas of machine learning have benefited from the increasing availability of large and varied datasets, the benefit to causal inference has been limited given the strong assumptions needed to ensure identifiability of causal effects; these are often not satisfied in real-world datasets. For example, many large observational datasets (e.g., case-control studies in epidemiology, click-through data in recommender systems) suffer from selection bias on the outcome,…

通过矩阵补全进行回溯因果推断：欧洲一体化与跨境就业AI 解读

We propose a method of retrospective counterfactual imputation in panel data settings with later-treated and always-treated units, but no never-treated units. We use the observed outcomes to impute the counterfactual outcomes of the later-treated using a matrix completion estimator. We propose a novel propensity-score and elapsed-time weighting of the estimator's objective function to correct for differences in the observed covariate and unobserved fixed effects…

情境多臂老虎机实验后的统计推断AI 解读

Contextual bandit algorithms are increasingly replacing non-adaptive A/B tests in e-commerce, healthcare, and policymaking because they can both improve outcomes for study participants and increase the chance of identifying good or even best policies. To support credible inference on novel interventions at the end of the study, nonetheless, we still want to construct valid confidence intervals on average treatment effects, subgroup effects, or value of new policies. The…

自适应多来源因果推断AI 解读

Data scarcity is a tremendous challenge in causal effect estimation. In this paper, we propose to exploit additional data sources to facilitate estimating causal effects in the target population. Specifically, we leverage additional source datasets which share similar causal mechanisms with the target observations to help infer causal effects of the target population. We propose three levels of knowledge transfer, through modelling the outcomes, treatments, and confounders.…

基于联邦观察数据的因果效应估计AI 解读

Many modern applications collect data that comes in federated spirit, with data kept locally and undisclosed. Till date, most insight into the causal inference requires data to be stored in a central repository. We present a novel framework for causal inference with federated data sources. We assess and integrate local causal effects from different private data sources without centralizing them. Then, the treatment effects on subjects from observational data using a…

整群随机实验中 Delta 方法与聚类稳健方差估计的等价性AI 解读

It often happens that the same problem presents itself to different communities and the solutions proposed or adopted by those communities are different. We take the case of the variance estimation of the population average treatment effect in cluster-randomized experiments. The econometrics literature promotes the cluster-robust variance estimator (Athey and Imbens, 2017), which can be dated back to the study of linear regression with clustered residuals (Liang and Zeger,…

评估新冠相关政策对疫情动态的因果影响：美国案例AI 解读

To mitigate the spread of COVID-19 pandemic, decision-makers and public authorities have announced various non-pharmaceutical policies. Analyzing the causal impact of these policies in reducing the spread of COVID-19 is important for future policy-making. The main challenge here is the existence of unobserved confounders (e.g., vigilance of residents). Besides, as the confounders may be time-varying during COVID-19 (e.g., vigilance of residents changes in the course of the…

一般因果时间序列中的暂时性变点检测AI 解读

We consider an epidemic change-point detection in a large class of causal time series models, including among other processes, AR($\infty$), ARCH($\infty$), TARCH($\infty$), ARMA-GARCH. A test statistic based on the Gaussian quasi-maximum likelihood estimator of the parameter is proposed. It is shown that, under the null hypothesis of no change, the test statistic converges to a distribution obtained from a difference of two Brownian bridge and diverges to infinity under the…

随机临床试验亚组分析中的协变量调整：倾向得分方法AI 解读

Background: Subgroup analyses are frequently conducted in randomized clinical trials to assess evidence of heterogeneous treatment effect across patient subpopulations. Although randomization balances covariates within subgroups in expectation, chance imbalance may be amplified in small subgroups and harm the precision. Covariate adjustment in overall analysis of RCT is often conducted, via either ANCOVA or propensity score weighting, but for subgroup analysis has been…