每日简报

多商品多期库存控制的实验设计AI 解读

Randomized experiments, or A/B testing, are the gold standard for evaluating interventions, yet they remain underutilized in inventory management. This study addresses this gap by analyzing A/B testing strategies in multi-item, multi-period inventory systems with lost sales and capacity constraints. We examine two canonical experimental designs--switchback experiments and item-level randomization--and show that both suffer from systematic bias due to interference: temporal…

时变处理效应估计中的不规则测量时点：偏差分类与调整方法比较AI 解读

To estimate the causal effect of treatments that vary over time from observational data, one must adjust for time-varying confounding. A common procedure to address confounding is the use of inverse probability of treatment weighting methods. However, the timing of covariate measurements is often irregular, which may introduce additional confounding bias as well as selection bias into the causal effect estimate. Two reweighting methods have been proposed to adjust for these…

利用结果信息辅助缺失处理状态的多重插补AI 解读

We provide guidance on multiple imputation of missing at random treatments in observational studies. Specifically, analysts should account for both covariates and outcomes, i.e., not just use propensity scores, when imputing the missing treatments. To do so, we develop outcome-assisted multiple imputation of missing treatments: the analyst fits a regression for the outcome on the treatment indicator and covariates, which is used to sharpen the predictive probabilities for…

未观测混杂下线性非高斯无环模型的可微因果发现AI 解读

We propose a novel score-based causal discovery method, named ABIC LiNGAM, which extends the linear non-Gaussian acyclic model (LiNGAM) framework to address the challenges of causal structure estimation in scenarios involving unmeasured confounders. By introducing the assumption that error terms follow a multivariate generalized normal distribution, our method leverages continuous optimization techniques to recover acyclic directed mixed graphs (ADMGs), including causal…

含即时效应的 VARMA 过程：全局马尔可夫性、忠实性与工具变量AI 解读

Causal reasoning has gained great attention over the last half century as it allows (or at least intends) to answer questions which go above those within the capabilities of classical inferential statistics using just observational data. So far, causal research has been focused mostly on the i.i.d. setting. However, many are the situations where there exists a non-trivial dependence structure between sequential observations. Motivated by this fact, the main purpose of this…

部分区间删失事件时间结局的半参数贝叶斯工具变量分析AI 解读

This paper develops a semiparametric Bayesian instrumental variable analysis method for estimating the causal effect of an endogenous variable when dealing with unobserved confounders and measurement errors with partly interval-censored time-to-event data, where event times are observed exactly for some subjects but left-censored, right-censored, or interval-censored for others. Our method is based on a two-stage Dirichlet process mixture instrumental variable (DPMIV) model…

三重差分工具变量设计AI 解读

In this paper, we formalize a triple instrumented difference-in-differences (DID-IV). In this design, a triple Wald-DID estimand, which divides the difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) estimand of the outcome by the DDD estimand of the treatment, captures the local average treatment effect on the treated. The identifying assumptions mainly comprise a monotonicity assumption, and the common acceleration assumptions in the treatment and the outcome. We extend the…

兼顾溢出与延续效应的极小极大最优实验设计AI 解读

In various applications, the potential outcome of a unit may be influenced by the treatments received by other units, a phenomenon known as interference, as well as by prior treatments, referred to as carryover effects. These phenomena violate the stable unit treatment value assumption and pose significant challenges in causal inference. To address these complexities, we propose a minimax optimal experimental design that simultaneously accounts for both spillover and…

放宽无混杂性假设的一般方法AI 解读

This paper defines a general class of relaxations of the unconfoundedness assumption. This class includes several previous approaches as special cases, including the marginal sensitivity model of Tan (2006). This class therefore allows us to precisely compare and contrast these previously disparate relaxations. We use this class to derive a variety of new identification results which can be used to assess sensitivity to unconfoundedness. In particular, the prior literature…

气候分析中含隐藏动态过程的一般因果结构学习AI 解读

Understanding climate dynamics requires going beyond correlations in observational data to uncover the underlying causal process. Latent drivers such as atmospheric processes play a central role in temporal dynamics, while direct causal influences also exist among geographically proximate observed variables. Traditional Causal Representation Learning (CRL) typically focuses on latent factors but overlooks such observable-to-observable causal relations, which limits its…

用显示偏好度量隐藏的消费者异质性AI 解读

Consumer heterogeneity in revealed-preference data is larger than bilateral rationality tests can reveal. We construct a continuous nonparametric metric of this hidden heterogeneity by repeatedly subsampling choices, partitioning agents into groups whose pooled data are jointly rationalisable under a chosen consistency criterion and recording how often each pair is co-classified. The resulting kernel is positive semi-definite, embeds the population in a Hilbert space, and…

兼顾未知的证据聚合：学习效应原型与知识边界AI 解读

When evaluating policy interventions, researchers often pursue two related goals: identifying which individuals or contexts benefit most, and determining whether patterns of treatment effect heterogeneity can be used to aggregate evidence across environments. We develop a framework that aggregates treatment effect heterogeneity, defined over individual and environmental characteristics, into interpretable summaries while setting aside contexts in which extrapolation is…

超越固定截断时间：临床试验中的自适应限制平均生存时间方法AI 解读

Restricted mean survival time (RMST) offers a compelling nonparametric alternative to hazard ratios for right-censored time-to-event data, particularly when the proportional hazards assumption is violated. By capturing the total event-free time over a specified horizon, RMST provides an intuitive and clinically meaningful measure of absolute treatment benefit. Nonetheless, selecting the restriction time $L$ poses challenges: choosing a small $L$ can overlook late-emerging…

高维处理的异质性因果效应估计：联合分析应用AI 解读

Estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects is an active area of research. Most of the existing methods, however, focus on estimating the conditional average treatment effects of a single, binary treatment given a set of pre-treatment covariates. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate the heterogeneous causal effects of high-dimensional treatments, which poses unique challenges in terms of estimation and interpretation. The proposed approach finds maximally…

利用题目级结果估计异质性处理效应：项目反应理论的启示AI 解读

Analyses of heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE) are common in applied causal inference research. However, when outcomes are latent variables assessed via psychometric instruments such as educational tests, standard methods ignore the potential HTE that may exist among the individual items of the outcome measure. Failing to account for "item-level" HTE (IL-HTE) can lead to both underestimated standard errors and identification challenges in the estimation of…

替代指标在个体因果效应共形推断中的作用AI 解读

Learning the Individual Treatment Effect (ITE) is essential for personalized decision-making, yet causal inference has traditionally focused on aggregated treatment effects. While integrating conformal prediction with causal inference can provide valid uncertainty quantification for ITEs, the resulting prediction intervals are often excessively wide, limiting their practical utility. To address this limitation, we introduce \underline{S}urrogate-assisted…

有限外生变异下处理效应的识别AI 解读

Multidimensional heterogeneity and endogeneity are important features of a wide class of econometric models. With control variables to correct for endogeneity, nonparametric identification of treatment effects requires strong support conditions. To alleviate this requirement, we consider varying coefficients specifications for the conditional expectation function of the outcome given a treatment and control variables. This function is expressed as a linear combination of…

存在多个事件的双重差分AI 解读

This paper studies staggered Difference-in-Differences (DiD) design when there is a second event confounding the target event. When the events are correlated, the treatment and the control group are unevenly exposed to the effects of the second event, causing an omitted event bias. To address this bias, I propose a two-stage DiD design. In the first stage, I estimate the combined effects of both treatments using a control group that is neither treated nor confounded. In the…

双臂最优臂识别中简单遗憾的极小极大最优性AI 解读

This study investigates an asymptotically minimax optimal algorithm in the two-armed fixed-budget best-arm identification (BAI) problem. Given two treatment arms, the objective is to identify the arm with the highest expected outcome through an adaptive experiment. We focus on the Neyman allocation, where treatment arms are allocated following the ratio of their outcome standard deviations. Our primary contribution is to prove the minimax optimality of the Neyman allocation…

利用负对照识别无效工具变量下的因果效应AI 解读

Many proposals for the identification of causal effects require an instrumental variable that satisfies strong, untestable unconfoundedness and exclusion restriction assumptions. In this paper, we show how one can potentially identify causal effects under violations of these assumptions by harnessing a negative control population or outcome. This strategy allows one to leverage sub-populations for whom the exposure is degenerate, and requires that the instrument-outcome…

保序倾向得分匹配AI 解读

We propose a one-to-many matching estimator of the average treatment effect based on propensity scores estimated by isotonic regression. This approach is predicated on the assumption of monotonicity in the propensity score function, a condition that can be justified in many economic applications. We show that the nature of the isotonic estimator can help us to fix many problems of existing matching methods, including efficiency, choice of the number of matches, choice of…

使用静态工具变量识别动态局部平均处理效应AI 解读

In many situations, researchers are interested in identifying dynamic effects of an irreversible treatment with a time-invariant binary instrumental variable (IV). For example, in evaluations of dynamic effects of training programs with a single lottery determining eligibility. A common approach in these situations is to report per-period IV estimates. Under a dynamic extension of standard IV assumptions, we show that such IV estimands identify a weighted sum of treatment…

用于反事实预测的合成分解AI 解读

Counterfactual predictions are challenging when the policy variable goes beyond its pre-policy support. However, in many cases, information about the policy of interest is available from different ("source") regions where a similar policy has already been implemented. In this paper, we propose a novel method of using such data from source regions to predict a new policy in a target region. Instead of relying on extrapolation of a structural relationship using a parametric…