每日简报

广义线性模型中多层模型与固定效应方法的比较AI 解读

We extend prior work comparing linear multilevel models (MLM) and fixed effect (FE) models to the generalized linear model (GLM) setting, where the coefficient on a treatment variable is of primary interest. This leads to three insights. (i) First, as in the linear setting, MLM can be thought of as a regularized form of FE (RegFE). This explains why group-level confounding can greatly bias MLM's treatment coefficient estimates. However, unlike the linear setting, there is…

识别与美国失业率相关的经济因素AI 解读

In this study, we seek to understand how macroeconomic factors such as GDP, inflation, Unemployment Insurance, and S&P 500 index; as well as microeconomic factors such as health, race, and educational attainment impacted the unemployment rate for about 20 years in the United States. Our research question is to identify which factor(s) contributed the most to the unemployment rate surge using linear regression. Results from our studies showed that GDP (negative), inflation…

大维矩阵因子模型的广义主成分分析AI 解读

Matrix factor models have been growing popular dimension reduction tools for large-dimensional matrix time series. However, the heteroscedasticity of the idiosyncratic components has barely received any attention. Starting from the pseudo likelihood function, this paper introduces a Generalized Principal Component Analysis (GPCA) method for matrix factor model which takes the heteroscedasticity into account. Theoretically, we first derive the asymptotic distributions of the…

从多模态生物医学观测中学习因果表征AI 解读

Prevalent in biomedical applications (e.g., human phenotype research), multimodal datasets can provide valuable insights into the underlying physiological mechanisms. However, current machine learning (ML) models designed to analyze these datasets often lack interpretability and identifiability guarantees, which are essential for biomedical research. Recent advances in causal representation learning have shown promise in identifying interpretable latent causal variables with…

通过保序校准稳定逆概率权重AI 解读

Inverse weighting with an estimated propensity score is widely used by estimation methods in causal inference to adjust for confounding bias. However, directly inverting propensity score estimates can lead to instability, bias, and excessive variability due to large inverse weights, especially when treatment overlap is limited. In this work, we propose a post-hoc calibration algorithm for inverse propensity weights that generates well-calibrated, stabilized weights from…

存在未观测混杂时连续处理效应的锐界AI 解读

In causal inference, treatment effects are typically estimated under the ignorability, or unconfoundedness, assumption, which is often unrealistic in observational data. By relaxing this assumption and conducting a sensitivity analysis, we introduce novel bounds and derive confidence intervals for the Average Potential Outcome (APO) - a standard metric for evaluating continuous-valued treatment or exposure effects. We demonstrate that these bounds are sharp under a…

条件高斯非线性系统的自适应在线平滑：闭式解与信息论滞后选择AI 解读

Data assimilation (DA) combines partial observations with dynamical models to improve state estimation. Filter-based DA uses only past and present data and is the prerequisite for real-time forecasts. Smoother-based DA exploits both past and future observations. It aims to fill in missing data, provide more accurate estimations, and develop high-quality datasets. However, the standard smoothing procedure requires using all historical state estimations, which is…

利用工具变量推断广义主分层条件下的处理效应AI 解读

We propose a general approach to inference for a broad class of models that arise in the analysis of treatment effects with discrete-valued treatments and instruments and a general-valued outcome. In addition to instrument exogeneity, the main substantive assumption in our class of models rules out certain response types by assuming that they occur with probability zero. Here, the response type refers to the vector of potential outcomes and potential treatments, and we refer…

个性化治疗方案的贝叶斯不确定性量化与多阶段变量选择AI 解读

A dynamic treatment regime is a sequence of medical decisions that adapts to the evolving clinical status of a patient over time. To facilitate personalized care, it is crucial to assess the probability of each available treatment option being optimal for a specific patient, while also identifying the key prognostic factors that determine the optimal sequence of treatments. This task has become increasingly challenging due to the growing number of individual prognostic…

回归能否给出具有代表性的因果效应排序？AI 解读

We examine the challenges in ranking multiple treatments based on their estimated effects when using linear regression or its popular double-machine-learning variant, the Partially Linear Model (PLM), in the presence of treatment effect heterogeneity. We demonstrate by example that overlap-weighting performed by linear models like PLM can produce Weighted Average Treatment Effects (WATE) that have rankings that are inconsistent with the rankings of the underlying Average…

超越传统 VIX：金融市场不确定性冲击的新识别方法AI 解读

We introduce a new identification strategy for uncertainty shocks to explain macroeconomic volatility in financial markets. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index (VIX) measures market expectations of future volatility, but traditional methods based on second-moment shocks and time-varying volatility of the VIX often fail to capture the non-Gaussian, heavy-tailed nature of asset returns. To address this, we construct a revised VIX by fitting a…

何时值得使用刀切法？突破 Z 估计量的二次维度门槛AI 解读

Resampling methods are especially well-suited to inference with estimators that provide only "black-box'' access. Jackknife is a form of resampling, widely used for bias correction and variance estimation, that is well-understood under classical scaling where the sample size $n$ grows for a fixed problem. We study its behavior in application to estimating functionals using high-dimensional $Z$-estimators, allowing both the sample size $n$ and problem dimension $d$ to…

利用 Copula 相等假设部分识别面板数据中的分布处理效应AI 解读

This paper aims to partially identify the distributional treatment effects (DTEs) that depend on the unknown joint distribution of treated and untreated potential outcomes. We construct the DTE bounds using panel data and allow individuals to switch between the treated and untreated states more than once over time. Individuals are grouped based on their past treatment history, and DTEs are allowed to be heterogeneous across different groups. We provide two alternative…

厚尾高维时间序列的稳健估计AI 解读

We study in this paper the problem of least absolute deviation (LAD) regression for high-dimensional heavy-tailed time series which have finite $α$-th moment with $α\in (1,2]$. To handle the heavy-tailed dependent data, we propose a Catoni type truncated minimization problem framework and obtain an $\mathcal{O}\big( \big( (d_1+d_2) (d_1\land d_2) \log^2 n / n \big)^{(α- 1)/α} \big)$ order excess risk, where $d_1$ and $d_2$ are the dimensionality and $n$ is the number of…

卡尺合成匹配：结合局部合成控制的广义半径匹配AI 解读

Matching promises transparent causal inferences for observational data, making it an intuitive approach for many applications. In practice, however, standard matching methods often perform poorly compared to modern approaches such as response-surface modeling and optimizing balancing weights. We propose Caliper Synthetic Matching (CSM) to address these challenges while preserving simple and transparent matches and match diagnostics. CSM extends Coarsened Exact Matching by…

分布的即时预测：函数型 MIDAS 模型AI 解读

We propose a functional MIDAS model to leverage high-frequency information for forecasting and nowcasting distributions observed at a lower frequency. We approximate the low-frequency distribution using Functional Principal Component Analysis and consider a group lasso spike-and-slab prior to identify the relevant predictors in the finite-dimensional SUR-MIDAS approximation of the functional MIDAS model. In our application, we use the model to nowcast the U.S. households'…

评《因子数未知时的稀疏贝叶斯因子分析》：网络潜在空间模型的应用AI 解读

The techniques suggested in Frühwirth-Schnatter et al. (2024) concern sparsity and factor selection and have enormous potential beyond standard factor analysis applications. We show how these techniques can be applied to Latent Space (LS) models for network data. These models suffer from well-known identification issues of the latent factors due to likelihood invariance to factor translation, reflection, and rotation (see Hoff et al., 2002). A set of observables can be…

利用 Lempel–Ziv 复杂度开展因果发现与分类AI 解读

Inferring causal relationships in the decision-making processes of machine learning algorithms is a crucial step toward achieving explainable Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this research, we introduce a novel causality measure and a distance metric derived from Lempel-Ziv (LZ) complexity. We explore how the proposed causality measure can be used in decision trees by enabling splits based on features that most strongly \textit{cause} the outcome. We further evaluate the…

识别问题的对抗式方法AI 解读

We introduce a new framework for characterizing identified sets of structural and counterfactual parameters in econometric models. By reformulating the identification problem as a set membership question, we leverage the separating hyperplane theorem in the space of observed probability measures to characterize the identified set through the zeros of a discrepancy function with an adversarial game interpretation. The set can be a singleton, resulting in point identification.…

非平稳矩阵值时间序列的协整关系检测AI 解读

This paper proposes a Matrix Error Correction Model to identify cointegration relations in matrix-valued time series. We hereby allow separate cointegrating relations along the rows and columns of the matrix-valued time series and use information criteria to select the cointegration ranks. Through Monte Carlo simulations and a macroeconomic application, we demonstrate that our approach provides a reliable estimation of the number of cointegrating relationships.

一般聚束设计中的识别与推断AI 解读

This paper develops an econometric framework and tools for the identification and inference of a structural parameter in general bunching designs. We present point and partial identification results, which generalize previous approaches in the literature. The key assumption for point identification is the analyticity of the counterfactual density, which defines a broader class of distributions than many commonly used parametric families. In the partial identification…

一般处理分配概率下实验设计的分布差异问题AI 解读

We investigate experimental design for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with both equal and unequal treatment-control assignment probabilities. Our work makes progress on the connection between the distributional discrepancy minimization (DDM) problem introduced by Harshaw et al. (2024) and the design of RCTs. We make two main contributions: First, we prove that approximating the optimal solution of the DDM problem within a certain constant error is NP-hard. Second, we…

整群随机试验中多重中介与溢出效应的贝叶斯非参数方法AI 解读

Cluster randomized trials (CRTs) with multiple unstructured mediators present significant methodological challenges for causal inference due to within-cluster correlation, interference among units, and the complexity introduced by multiple mediators. Existing causal mediation methods often fall short in simultaneously addressing these complexities, particularly in disentangling mediator-specific effects under interference that are central to studying complex mechanisms. To…

利用触发强度提高 A/B 实验精度AI 解读

In industry, online randomized controlled experiment (a.k.a. A/B experiment) is a standard approach to measure the impact of a causal change. These experiments have small treatment effect to reduce the potential blast radius. As a result, these experiments often lack statistical significance due to low signal-to-noise ratio. A standard approach for improving the precision (or reducing the standard error) focuses only on the trigger observations, where the output of the…