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非线性孟德尔随机化研究中的因果估计与推断AI 解读

Mendelian randomization (MR) is widely used to uncover causal relationships in the presence of unmeasured confounders. However, most existing MR methods presuppose linear causality, risking bias when the true relationships are nonlinear, which is a common empirical scenario. In this paper, we compared two prevalent instrumental variable techniques (the two-stage prediction method and the control function method) under both linear and nonlinear settings, and addressed key…

利用观测数据估计因果效应：农业与应用经济学研究指南AI 解读

Most research questions in agricultural and applied economics are of a causal nature, i.e., how one or more variables (e.g., policies, prices, the weather) affect one or more other variables (e.g., income, crop yields, pollution). Only some of these research questions can be studied experimentally. Most empirical studies in agricultural and applied economics thus rely on observational data. However, estimating causal effects with observational data requires appropriate…

基于锚定的因果设计：估计信念的影响AI 解读

A central challenge in any study of the effects of beliefs on outcomes, such as decisions and behavior, is the risk of omitted variables bias. Omitted variables, frequently unmeasured or even unknown, can induce correlations between beliefs and decisions that are not genuinely causal, in which case the omitted variables are referred to as confounders. To address the challenge of causal inference, researchers frequently rely on information provision experiments to randomly…

一般误差分布下贝叶斯因果发现的 DAG 选择一致性AI 解读

We consider the problem of learning the underlying causal structure among a set of variables, which are assumed to follow a Bayesian network or, more specifically, a linear recursive structural equation model (SEM) with the associated errors being independent and allowed to be non-Gaussian. A Bayesian hierarchical model is proposed to identify the true data-generating directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure where the nodes and edges represent the variables and the direct…

基于Bagged正则化k距离的异常检测AI 解读

We consider the paradigm of unsupervised anomaly detection, which involves the identification of anomalies within a dataset in the absence of labeled examples. Though distance-based methods are top-performing for unsupervised anomaly detection, they suffer heavily from the sensitivity to the choice of the number of the nearest neighbors. In this paper, we propose a new distance-based algorithm called bagged regularized $k$-distances for anomaly detection (BRDAD), converting…

构造 g-computation 估计量：选择偏差的两个案例AI 解读

G-computation is a useful estimation method that can be adapted to address various biases in epidemiology. However, these adaptations may not be obvious for some complex causal structures. This challenge is an example of the much wider issue of translating a causal diagram into a novel estimation strategy. To highlight these challenges, we consider two recent cases from the selection bias literature: treatment-induced selection and co-occurrence of biases that lack a joint…

非线性动态模型中脉冲响应函数的识别AI 解读

We explore the issues of identification for nonlinear Impulse Response Functions in nonlinear dynamic models and discuss the settings in which the problem can be mitigated. In particular, we introduce the nonlinear autoregressive representation with Gaussian innovations and characterize the identified set. This set arises from the multiplicity of nonlinear innovations and transformations which leave invariant the standard normal density. We then discuss possible identifying…

广义最优传输AI 解读

Many causal and structural parameters in economics can be identified and estimated by computing the value of an optimization program over all distributions consistent with the model and the data. Existing tools apply when the data is discrete, or when only disjoint marginals of the distribution are identified, which is restrictive in many applications. We develop a general framework that yields sharp bounds on a linear functional of the unknown true distribution under i) an…

打开局部投影的黑箱AI 解读

Local projections (LPs) are widely used in empirical macroeconomics to estimate impulse responses to policy interventions. Yet, in many ways, they are black boxes. It is often unclear what mechanism or historical episodes drive a particular estimate. We introduce a new decomposition of LP estimates into the sum of contributions of historical events, which is the product, for each time stamp, of a weight and the realization of the response variable. In the least squares case,…

社会关系扰动政策的识别AI 解读

Social disruption occurs when a policy creates or destroys many network connections between agents. It is a costly side effect of many interventions and so a growing empirical literature recommends measuring and accounting for social disruption when evaluating the welfare impact of a policy. However, there is currently little work characterizing what can actually be learned about social disruption from data in practice. In this paper, we consider the problem of identifying…

动态离散选择模型中折现因子与收益函数的半参数识别AI 解读

This paper investigates how the discount factor and payoff functions can be identified in stationary infinite-horizon dynamic discrete choice models. In single-agent models, we show that common nonparametric assumptions on per-period payoffs -- such as homogeneity of degree one, monotonicity, concavity, zero cross-differences, and complementarity -- provide identifying restrictions on the discount factor. These restrictions take the form of polynomial equalities and…

矩阵时间序列 CP 因子模型的识别与估计AI 解读

We propose a new method for identifying and estimating the CP-factor models for matrix time series. Unlike the generalized eigenanalysis-based method of Chang et al. (2023) for which the convergence rates of the associated estimators may suffer from small eigengaps as the asymptotic theory is based on some matrix perturbation analysis, the proposed new method enjoys faster convergence rates which are free from any eigengaps. It achieves this by turning the problem into a…

含部分无效代理变量的自适应近端因果推断AI 解读

Proximal causal inference (PCI) is a recently proposed framework to identify and estimate the causal effect of an exposure on an outcome in the presence of hidden confounders, using observed proxies. Specifically, PCI relies on two types of proxies: a treatment-inducing confounding proxy, related to the outcome only through its association with unmeasured confounders (given treatment and covariates), and an outcome-inducing confounding proxy, related to the treatment only…

任意结构潜变量下线性因果模型的 Trek 路径参数识别AI 解读

We develop a criterion to certify whether causal effects are identifiable in linear structural equation models with latent variables. Linear structural equation models correspond to directed graphs whose nodes represent the random variables of interest and whose edges are weighted with linear coefficients that correspond to direct causal effects. In contrast to previous identification methods, we do not restrict ourselves to settings where the latent variables constitute…

高频事件研究中因果效应的识别与估计AI 解读

We provide precise conditions for nonparametric identification of causal effects by high-frequency event study regressions, which have been used widely in the recent macroeconomics, financial economics and political economy literatures. The high-frequency event study method regresses changes in an outcome variable on a measure of unexpected changes in a policy variable in a narrow time window around an event or a policy announcement (e.g., a 30-minute window around an FOMC…

无需饱和设定的非参数“丰富协变量”方法AI 解读

We consider two nonparametric approaches to ensure that linear instrumental variables estimators satisfy the rich-covariates condition emphasized by Blandhol et al. (2025), even when the instrument is not unconditionally randomly assigned and the model is not saturated. Both approaches start with a nonparametric estimate of the expectation of the instrument conditional on the covariates, and ensure that the rich-covariates condition is satisfied either by using as the…

利用工具变量双重稳健估计生存数据的最优治疗规则AI 解读

In survival contexts, substantial literature exists on estimating optimal treatment regimes, where treatments are assigned based on personal characteristics to maximize the survival probability. These methods assume that a set of covariates is sufficient to deconfound the treatment-outcome relationship. However, this assumption can be limited in observational studies or randomized trials in which non-adherence occurs. Therefore, we propose a novel approach to estimating…

具有有序结果变量的成对数据模型AI 解读

We consider ordered logit models for directed network data that allow for flexible sender and receiver fixed effects that can vary arbitrarily across outcome categories. This structure poses a significant incidental parameter problem, particularly challenging under network sparsity or when some outcome categories are rare. We develop the first estimation method for this setting by extending tetrad-differencing conditional maximum likelihood (CML) techniques from binary…

最大定向部分有向无环图中的条件因果效应识别AI 解读

We consider identifying a conditional causal effect when a graph is known up to a maximally oriented partially directed acyclic graph (MPDAG). An MPDAG represents an equivalence class of graphs that is restricted by background knowledge and where all variables in the causal model are observed. We provide three results that address identification in this setting: an identification formula when the conditioning set is unaffected by treatment, a generalization of the well-known…

自然中介效应与随机干预类比量差异的检测与理解AI 解读

In causal mediation analysis, the natural direct and indirect effects (natural effects) are nonparametrically unidentifiable in the presence of treatment-induced confounding, which motivated the development of randomized interventional analogues (RIAs) of the natural effects. Being easier to identify, the RIAs are becoming widely used in practice. However, applied researchers often interpret RIA estimates as if they were the natural effects, even though the RIAs can be poor…

更好地理解三重差分估计量AI 解读

Triple Differences (DDD) designs are widely used in empirical work to relax parallel trends assumptions in Difference-in-Differences (DiD) settings. This paper highlights that common DDD implementations -- such as taking the difference between two DiDs or applying three-way fixed effects regressions -- are generally invalid when identification requires conditioning on covariates. In staggered adoption settings, the common DiD practice of pooling all not-yet-treated units as…

未观测混杂下双向近端因果推断的回归方法AI 解读

Proxy variables are commonly used in causal inference when unmeasured confounding exists. While most existing proximal methods assume a unidirectional causal relationship between two primary variables, many social and biological systems exhibit complex feedback mechanisms that imply bidirectional causality. In this paper, using regression-based models, we extend the proximal framework to identify bidirectional causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding. We…

重访伯克利录取数据：因果假设的统计检验AI 解读

Reasoning about fairness through correlation-based notions is rife with pitfalls. The 1973 University of California, Berkeley graduate school admissions case from Bickel et. al. (1975) is a classic example of one such pitfall, namely Simpson's paradox. The discrepancy in admission rates among males and female applicants, in the aggregate data over all departments, vanishes when admission rates per department are examined. We reason about the Berkeley graduate school…

通过惊异度学习实现时间线数据的可解释变换与分析AI 解读

The analysis of high-dimensional timeline data and the identification of outliers and anomalies is critical across diverse domains, including sensor readings, biological and medical data, historical records, and global statistics. However, conventional analysis techniques often struggle with challenges such as high dimensionality, complex distributions, and sparsity. These limitations hinder the ability to extract meaningful insights from complex temporal datasets, making it…