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协变量缺失时协变量自适应随机试验的回归调整AI 解读

Covariate-adaptive randomization is widely used in clinical trials to balance prognostic factors, and regression adjustments are often adopted to further enhance the estimation and inference efficiency. In practice, the covariates may contain missing values. Various methods have been proposed to handle the covariate missing problem under simple randomization. However, the statistical properties of the resulting average treatment effect estimators under stratified…

随机效应模型下多区域临床试验的一致性评估与样本量计算AI 解读

Multi-regional clinical trials (MRCTs) have become common practice for drug development and global registration. Once overall significance is established, demonstrating regional consistency is critical for local health authorities. Methods for evaluating such consistency and calculating regional sample sizes have been proposed based on the fixed effects model using various criteria. To better account for the heterogeneity of treatment effects across regions, the random…

M-learner：中介模型中异质处理效应的学习框架AI 解读

We propose a novel method, termed the M-learner, for estimating heterogeneous indirect and total treatment effects and identifying relevant subgroups within a mediation framework. The procedure comprises four key steps. First, we compute individual-level conditional average indirect/total treatment effect Second, we construct a distance matrix based on pairwise differences. Third, we apply tSNE to project this matrix into a low-dimensional Euclidean space, followed by…

配对簇随机试验中的推断AI 解读

This paper studies inference in cluster randomized trials where treatment status is determined according to a "matched pairs" design. Here, by a cluster randomized experiment, we mean one in which treatment is assigned at the level of the cluster; by a "matched pairs" design, we mean that a sample of clusters is paired according to baseline, cluster-level covariates and, within each pair, one cluster is selected at random for treatment. We study the large-sample behavior of…

图神经网络的过度压缩与重连策略的因果评估AI 解读

Graph neural networks (GNNs) have exhibited state-of-the-art performance across wide-range of domains such as recommender systems, material design, and drug repurposing. Yet message-passing GNNs suffer from over-squashing -- exponential compression of long-range information from distant nodes -- which limits expressivity. Rewiring techniques can ease this bottleneck; but their practical impacts are unclear due to the lack of a direct empirical over-squashing metric. We…

观点：因果机器学习的广泛应用需要严格的合成实验AI 解读

Causal machine learning has the potential to revolutionize decision-making by combining the predictive power of machine learning algorithms with the theory of causal inference. However, these methods remain underutilized by the broader machine learning community, in part because current empirical evaluations do not permit assessment of their reliability and robustness, undermining their practical utility. Specifically, one of the principal criticisms made by the community is…

推动平均处理效应AI 解读

The instrumental variable method is a prominent approach to recover under certain conditions, valid inference about a treatment causal effect even when unmeasured confounding might be present. In a groundbreaking paper, Imbens and Angrist (1994) established that a valid instrument nonparametrically identifies the average causal effect among compliers, also known as the local average treatment effect under a certain monotonicity assumption which rules out the existence of…

基于 Copula 标准化流的未观测混杂敏感性分析AI 解读

We propose a novel method for sensitivity analysis to unobserved confounding in causal inference. The method builds on a copula-based causal graphical normalizing flow that we term $ρ$-GNF, where $ρ\in [-1,+1]$ is the sensitivity parameter. The parameter represents the non-causal association between exposure and outcome due to unobserved confounding, which is modeled as a Gaussian copula. In other words, the $ρ$-GNF enables scholars to estimate the average causal effect…

聚类干扰下的非参数因果生存分析AI 解读

Inferring treatment effects on a survival time outcome based on data from an observational study is challenging due to the presence of censoring and possible confounding. An additional challenge occurs when a unit's treatment affects the outcome of other units, i.e., there is interference. In some settings, units may be grouped into clusters such that it is reasonable to assume interference only occurs within clusters, i.e., there is clustered interference. In this paper,…

单调连续处理效应曲线的双重稳健逐点置信区间AI 解读

We study nonparametric inference for the causal dose-response (or treatment effect) curve when the treatment variable is continuous rather than binary or discrete. We do this by developing doubly robust confidence intervals for the continuous treatment effect curve (at a fixed point) under the assumption that it is monotonic, based on inverting a likelihood ratio-type test. Monotonicity of the treatment effect curve is often a very natural assumption, and this assumption…

未观测混杂的多元回归分析AI 解读

Whereas confidence intervals are used to assess uncertainty due to unmeasured individuals, confounding intervals can be used to assess uncertainty due to unmeasured attributes. Previously, we have introduced a methodology for computing confounding intervals in a simple regression setting in a paper titled ``Regression Analysis of Unmeasured Confounding." Here we extend that methodology for more general application in the context of multiple regression. Our multiple…

评估时变调节作用的因果偏离效应元学习方法AI 解读

Advances in wearable technologies and health interventions delivered by smartphones have greatly increased the accessibility of mobile health (mHealth) interventions. Micro-randomized trials (MRTs) are designed to assess the effectiveness of the mHealth intervention and introduce a novel class of causal estimands called "causal excursion effects." These estimands enable the evaluation of how intervention effects change over time and are influenced by individual…

连续工具变量下局部处理效应的非参数估计AI 解读

Instrumental variable methods are widely used to address unmeasured confounding, yet much of the existing literature has focused on the binary instrument setting. Extensions to continuous instruments often impose strong parametric assumptions for identification and estimation, which can be difficult to justify and may limit their applicability in complex real-world settings. In this work, we develop theory and methods for nonparametric estimation of treatment effects with a…

用于因果推断中自动混杂发现与子群分析的大语言模型智能体AI 解读

Estimating individualized treatment effects from observational data presents a persistent challenge due to unmeasured confounding and structural bias. Causal Machine Learning (causal ML) methods, such as causal trees and doubly robust estimators, provide tools for estimating conditional average treatment effects. These methods have limited effectiveness in complex real-world environments due to the presence of latent confounders or those described in unstructured formats.…

多单位前后比较研究的随机化推断：乌拉圭刑事程序改革应用AI 解读

Learning about the immediate causal effects of large-scale policy interventions poses a significant challenge for quasi-experimental methods that rely on long-term trends or parametric modeling assumptions. As an alternative, we develop a randomization inference framework for before-and-after studies with multiple units, designed specifically for short-term causal inference and allowing for general assignment mechanisms. The method provides finite-sample-valid statistical…

用于可解释异质性处理效应估计的因果融合lassoAI 解读

We propose a novel method for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects based on the fused lasso. By first ordering samples based on the propensity or prognostic score, we match units from the treatment and control groups. We then run the fused lasso to obtain piecewise constant treatment effects with respect to the ordering defined by the score. Similar to the existing methods based on discretizing the score, our methods yield interpretable subgroup effects. However,…

空间一般均衡中的随机边界：基于扩散的溢出效应因果推断AI 解读

This paper introduces a novel framework for causal inference in spatial economics that explicitly models the stochastic transition from partial to general equilibrium effects. We develop a Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) integrated with boundary detection methods from stochastic process theory to identify when and how treatment effects propagate beyond local markets. Our approach treats the evolution of spatial spillovers as a Lévy process with jump-diffusion…

高维非线性模型中的潜在混杂AI 解读

We consider the the problem of identifying causal effects given a high-dimensional treatment vector in the presence of low-dimensional latent confounders. We assume a parametric structural causal model in which the outcome is permitted to depend on a sparse linear combination of the treatment vector and confounders nonlinearly. We consider a generalisation of the LAVA estimator of Chernozhukov et al. [2017] for estimating the treatment effects and show that under the…

跨反事实世界的倾向得分加权：正值性违背下的纵向效应AI 解读

When examining a contrast between two interventions, longitudinal causal inference studies frequently encounter positivity violations when one or both regimes are impossible to observe for some subjects. Existing weighting methods either assume positivity holds or produce effects that conflate interventions' impacts on ultimate outcomes with their effects on intermediate treatments and covariates. We propose a novel class of estimands -- cumulative cross-world weighted…

加权平行趋势下截距平移合成控制估计量的一致性AI 解读

The average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) in a staggered-adoption panel is estimated using an intercept-augmented synthetic-control (SCM) estimator. A weighted parallel trends plus an intercept shift, together with mild regularity on the weight vectors (non-degenerate dispersion) and expanding pre-treatment length, are sufficient for consistency allowing for heavy-tailed shocks. These conditions can be more interpretable than the autoregressive or low-rank factor…

随机临床试验处理效应估计中的线性模型协变量调整：指导模拟的理论AI 解读

Building on key papers that were published in special issues of Biometrics in 1957 and 1982 we propose and develop a three-aspect system for evaluating the effect of fitting covariates in the analysis of designed experiments, in particular randomised clinical trials. The three aspects are: first the effect on residual mean square error, second the effect on the variance inflation factor (VIF) and third the effect on second order precision. We concentrate, in particular, on…

DFW：用于协变量平衡与处理效应估计的新加权方案AI 解读

Estimating causal effects from observational data is challenging due to selection bias, which leads to imbalanced covariate distributions across treatment groups. Propensity score-based weighting methods are widely used to address this issue by reweighting samples to simulate a randomized controlled trial (RCT). However, the effectiveness of these methods heavily depends on the observed data and the accuracy of the propensity score estimator. For example, inverse propensity…

积分方程解的线性泛函置信集合的渐近有效性AI 解读

This paper examines the construction of confidence sets for parameters defined as linear functionals of a function of W and X whose conditional mean given Z and X equals the conditional mean of another variable Y given Z and X. Many estimands of interest in causal inference can be expressed in this form, including the average treatment effect in proximal causal inference and treatment effect contrasts in instrumental variable models. We derive a necessary condition for a…

误差方差弱递增下最小迹有向无环图的可识别性与爬山搜索AI 解读

We prove that the true underlying directed acyclic graph (DAG) in Gaussian linear structural equation models is identifiable as the minimum-trace DAG when the error variances are weakly increasing with respect to the true causal ordering. This result bridges two existing frameworks as it extends the identifiable cases within the minimum-trace DAG method and provides a principled interpretation of the algorithmic ordering search approach, revealing that its objective is…