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对哪个目标量最好？时变处理的纵向匹配与目标试验模拟已知真值基准AI 解读

On a non-collapsible survival mechanism, longitudinal-matching and target-trial-emulation methods are not competing estimators of one truth but answers to different causal questions, so a benchmark that scores them against a single "true hazard ratio" fabricates bias. We provide the direct comparison of relative efficiency, variance estimation, and model sensitivity that reviews find lacking. On a deliberately non-collapsible continuous-time Cox mechanism with known truth,…

对提前反应与平行趋势违背的联合敏感性分析AI 解读

Two key identifying assumptions used to justify difference-in-differences are parallel trends and no anticipation, yet both may fail in practice. I propose a class of assumptions that constitute deviations from no anticipation and derive closed-form, sharp bounds for several common treatment effect parameters while simultaneously relaxing parallel trends. Deviations from both assumptions are jointly disciplined using observed pre-trends. When some anticipation is imposed,…

利用因果森林估计出行方式转变的异质性AI 解读

Objectives: While causal analysis of travel behavior is an emerging field, estimating heterogeneity in mode choice through causal modeling remains unexplored. This study demonstrates the application of a novel causal method, causal forest, to quantify the heterogeneity in travel mode choice shifts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We applied causal forests, a non-parametric causal machine learning method, to 802,935 trip records from the 2017 and 2022 waves of the…

存在未观测效应修饰变量时冲突试验的回归式近端协调AI 解读

Randomized controlled trials with similar protocols may yield conflicting findings when the distribution of relevant effect modifiers differs across study populations. Yet no formal statistical framework exists for defining and assessing whether conflicting trials are reconcilable, despite the importance of this question for evidence synthesis and regulatory decision making. To address this gap, we develop a causal inference framework for evaluating conditional and marginal…

有限总体中的单调性检验AI 解读

We consider the extent to which we can learn from a completely randomized experiment whether all individuals have treatment effects that are weakly of the same sign, a condition we call monotonicity. From a classical sampling perspective, it is well-known that monotonicity is not falsifiable. We show that from the design-based perspective---in which the potential outcomes are fixed and only treatment assignment is stochastic---that the distribution of treatment effects in…

使用 gsDesign 进行样本量重估的两阶段设计AI 解读

The effect size and nuisance parameters needed to appropriately size a clinical trial are generally not adequately understood before a trial begins. Through pre-planned early stopping rules, a conservatively planned group sequential design can effectively adapt the sample size for a clinical trial for a new treatment that is ineffective, very effective or minimally effective. One potential issue with such designs is that a substantial number of patients can be enrolled after…

函数型因果推断框架中的广义倾向得分加权AI 解读

Estimating causal effects in observational studies requires adjustment for confounding, a task that becomes challenging when the exposure is a function observed over a continuous domain rather than a scalar variable. We develop a functional propensity score weighting framework that achieves covariate balance by removing dependence between time-varying treatments and observed confounders, thereby enabling estimation of marginal causal effects in settings with functional…

脏空气惩罚的持续性：F1 2022 年地面效应规则的因果分析AI 解读

In early 2022, FIA mandated the change to the technical regulations for Formula 1, requiring to design cars around ground effect aerodynamics to mitigate the performance loss incurred by driving in the turbulent "Dirty Air" of another car. The reduction of the penalty was subsequently claimed, but never formally evaluated on a per lap basis. We gathered 100486 racing laps for the years 2021-2025 using the FastF1 API, built a compound-specific physics correction for Dirty Air…

时变神谕治疗策略的性能界限AI 解读

Much causal inference research is focused on methods for optimizing dynamic treatment regimes (Murphy, 2003; Robins, 2004; Schulte et al., 2015), which are rules for deciding which treatments should be assigned and when based on evolving history. There is a certain optimism underlying this endeavor that with enough tinkering we might realize consequential improvements. Another strand of research, previously confined to the point exposure setting, considers bounds on how well…

连接预测与归因：利用同化因果推断识别前向与后向因果影响范围AI 解读

Causal inference identifies cause-and-effect relationships between variables. While traditional approaches rely on data to reveal causal links, a recently developed method, assimilative causal inference (ACI), integrates observations with dynamical models. It utilizes Bayesian data assimilation to trace causes back from observed effects by quantifying the reduction in uncertainty. ACI advances the detection of instantaneous causal relationships and the intermittent reversal…

随机干预效应的校准贝叶斯推断AI 解读

Causal inference increasingly extends beyond classical causal effects defined by deterministic treatment assignments, such as the average treatment effect, to stochastic intervention effects that can weaken positivity requirements and offer greater policy relevance. Nonparametric Bayesian models are attractive for estimating these effects due to their flexibility and inherent uncertainty propagation, but this posterior uncertainty need not be well calibrated for the causal…

时空因果推断中的异质性处理效应估计AI 解读

Scholars from diverse fields increasingly rely on high-frequency spatio-temporal data. Yet, causal inference with these data remains challenging due to spatial spillover and temporal carryover effects. We develop methods to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects by allowing for arbitrary spatial and temporal causal dependencies. We focus on common settings where the treatment and outcomes are time-varying spatial point patterns and where moderators are either spatial or…

交叉拟合折数较多时的去偏机器学习AI 解读

This paper studies debiased machine learning (DML) when the number of cross-fitting folds, $K_n$, may grow with the sample size $n$. Existing fixed-$K$ asymptotic theory implies that DML1 and DML2, the two main DML variants, are asymptotically equivalent, providing no guidance on which variant to use or how to choose $K_n$. We show that this equivalence can break down when $K_n$ grows proportionally to $\sqrt{n}$: DML1 can exhibit asymptotic bias, in which case standard…

多中介情形下自然直接与间接相对风险的回归方法AI 解读

Mediation analysis investigates whether part of the treatment effect is channelled through one or more mediators along the causal pathway between the treatment and the primary outcome. However, the presence of multiple, potentially dependent mediators raises substantial challenges, particularly when the outcome is binary, the mediators are measured on different scales, and interactions are present. We consider on causal mediation analysis with a binary treatment and a binary…

单人试验的因果推断AI 解读

The aim of personalized medicine is to tailor treatment decisions to individuals' characteristics. N-of-1 trials are within-person crossover trials that hold the promise of targeting individual-specific effects. While the idea behind N-of-1 trials might seem simple, analyzing and interpreting N-of-1 trials is not straightforward. Here we ground N-of-1 trials in a formal causal inference framework and formalize intuitive claims from the N-of-1 trials literature. We focus on…

基于核岭回归的条件平均处理效应迁移学习AI 解读

The proliferation of data has sparked significant interest in leveraging findings from one study to estimate treatment effects in a different target population without direct outcome observations. However, the transfer learning process is frequently hindered by substantial covariate shift and limited overlap between (i) the source and target populations, as well as (ii) the treatment and control groups within the source. We propose a novel method for overlap-adaptive…

小样本与短面板：用贴近实际的数据评估政策评价方法AI 解读

Methods for estimating causal effects in longitudinal, quasi-experimental settings are widely used in economics, public health, political science, and other fields. However, studies evaluating effects of health policies often rely on limited sample sizes, both in terms of study units and time periods analyzed. Synthetic difference-in-differences (SDiD) and the augmented synthetic control method (ASCM) are recently developed methods for evaluating the effects of policy…

观察性多层网络数据的回归估计AI 解读

A novel method to estimate social effect coefficients in the popular so-called linear-in-means regression model in the Social Sciences is presented here that utilizes non-experimental multidimensional network data. The procedure can accommodate social interactions that correlate with the error in the model by making use of a different set of network links among the same observations that are exogenous in the traditional sense. In particular, the full observability of a…

利用随机分配与观察网络数据估计社会效应AI 解读

This paper introduces an innovative approach to identifying and estimating the parameters of interest in the widely recognized linear-in-means regression model under conditions where the initial randomization of peers determines the observed network. We assert that peers who are initially randomized do not produce social effects. However, after randomization, agents can endogenously develop significant connections that potentially generate peer influences. We present a…

高维交互固定效应下的双重机器学习AI 解读

Factor structures are central to empirical work in economics and finance, and are usually used to model time-varying unobserved heterogeneity through interactive fixed effects (IFE). Existing IFE estimators rest on low-dimensional and linear specifications in the covariates, assumptions which are increasingly restrictive in applications drawing on rich datasets with controls of unknown functional form. This paper develops a Double Machine Learning estimator for the…

事件时间结果因果亚组估计的贝叶斯层级自助框架AI 解读

Causal estimation of treatment effects within prespecified subgroups, such as biomarker-defined strata, disease phenotypes, or demographic groups are often of clinical interest. Bayesian approaches are attractive for subgroup effect estimation because flexible priors can represent complex treatment heterogeneity and propagate posterior uncertainty. Frequentist methods for prespecified causal subgroup analysis with time-to-event outcomes are also available, including…

随机对象的单调处理反应与部分识别AI 解读

Monotone treatment response (MTR), monotone treatment selection (MTS), and monotone instrumental variable (MIV) assumptions are widely used to partially identify counterfactual mean outcomes, but existing analyses have focused almost exclusively on scalar outcomes. We develop a unified framework for partial identification with outcomes that take values in a general metric space under these monotonicity restrictions by embedding the metric space into an $L^2$ space and…

右删失结果回归与推断的双重稳健学习器AI 解读

This paper introduces a general framework for doubly robust nonparametric regression with right-censored outcomes, adapting the strategy of the 'DR-learner' for heterogeneous treatment effects to the censored data setting. Our method generalizes censoring unbiased transformations to generate pseudo-outcomes, which serve as inputs for a second-stage nonparametric regression with sample-splitting or cross-fitting. We derive a novel representation of the conditional bias of…

聚合中的迷失：工具变量估计目标的因果解释AI 解读

Instrumental variable estimation has emerged as a standard approach to mitigating confounding bias in the social sciences and epidemiology, where conducting randomized experiments can be too costly or infeasible. However, justifying the validity of the instrument is frequently challenging. We highlight a problem generally neglected in arguments for instrumental variable validity: the presence of an "aggregate treatment variable", where the treatment (e.g., education, GDP,…