每日简报

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…

存在未测量混杂时的序贯处理效应估计AI 解读

This paper studies the cumulative causal effects of sequential treatments in the presence of unmeasured confounders. It is a critical issue in sequential decision-making scenarios where treatment decisions and outcomes dynamically evolve over time. Advanced causal methods apply transformer as a backbone to model such time sequences, which shows superiority in capturing long time dependence and periodic patterns via attention mechanism. However, even they control the observed…

具有时变停留者比例的迁移者—停留者模型AI 解读

Mover-stayer models are used in social sciences and economics to model heterogeneous population dynamics in which some individuals never experience the event of interest ("stayers"), while others transition between states over time ("movers"). Conventionally, the mover-stayer status is determined at baseline and time-dependent covariates are only incorporated in the movers' transition probabilities. In this paper, we present a novel dynamic version of the mover-stayer model,…

向量值变量的因果发现与一致性引导的聚合AI 解读

Causal discovery (CD) aims to discover the causal graph underlying the data generation mechanism of observed variables. In many real-world applications, the observed variables are vector-valued, such as in climate science where variables are defined over a spatial grid and the task is called spatio-temporal causal discovery. We motivate CD in vector-valued variable setting while considering different possibilities for the underlying model, and highlight the pitfalls of…

以目标学习估计抽样方差以改进推断AI 解读

For robust statistical inference it is crucial to obtain a good estimator of the variance of the proposed estimator of the statistical estimand. A commonly used estimator of the variance for an asymptotically linear estimator is the sample variance of the estimated influence function. This estimator has been shown to be anti-conservative in limited samples or in the presence of near-positivity violations, leading to elevated Type-I error rates and poor coverage. In this…

通过重要性加权扩散蒸馏进行因果估计的生成框架AI 解读

Estimating individualized treatment effects from observational data is a central challenge in causal inference, largely due to covariate imbalance and confounding bias from non-randomized treatment assignment. While inverse probability weighting (IPW) is a well-established solution to this problem, its integration into modern deep learning frameworks remains limited. In this work, we propose Importance-Weighted Diffusion Distillation (IWDD), a novel generative framework that…

定量贸易与空间模型的新贝叶斯自助法AI 解读

Economists use quantitative trade and spatial models to make counterfactual predictions. Because such predictions often inform policy decisions, it is important to communicate the uncertainty surrounding them. Three key challenges arise in this setting: the data are dyadic and exhibit complex dependence; the number of interacting units is typically small; and counterfactual predictions depend on the data in two distinct ways-through the estimation of structural parameters…

合理处理效应路径的估计与可视化AI 解读

We consider point estimation and inference for the treatment effect path of a policy. Examples include dynamic treatment effects in microeconomics, impulse response functions in macroeconomics, and event study paths in finance. We present two sets of plausible bounds to quantify and visualize the uncertainty associated with this object. Both plausible bounds are often substantially tighter than traditional confidence intervals, and can provide useful insights even when…

通过分区估计处理伤害率AI 解读

In causal inference with binary outcomes, there is a growing interest in estimation of treatment harm rate (THR), which is a measure of treatment risk and reveals treatment effect heterogeneity in a subpopulation. The THR is generally non-identifiable even for randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and existing works focus primarily on the estimation of the THR under either untestable identification or ambiguous model assumptions. We develop a class of partitioning-based…

用于双重差分的森林：超越参数模型的因果推断AI 解读

This paper introduces the Difference-in-Differences Bayesian Causal Forest (DiD-BCF), a novel non-parametric model addressing key challenges in DiD estimation, such as staggered adoption and heterogeneous treatment effects. DiD-BCF provides a unified framework for estimating Average (ATE), Group-Average (GATE), and Conditional Average Treatment Effects (CATE). A core innovation, its Parallel Trends Assumption (PTA)-based reparameterization, enhances estimation accuracy and…

学生化中位数的 m-out-of-n 自助估计：中心极限定理与 Edgeworth 展开AI 解读

The m-out-of-n bootstrap, originally proposed by Bickel, Gotze, and Zwet (1992), approximates the distribution of a statistic by repeatedly drawing m subsamples (with m much smaller than n) without replacement from an original sample of size n. It is now routinely used for robust inference with heavy-tailed data, bandwidth selection, and other large-sample applications. Despite its broad applicability across econometrics, biostatistics, and machine learning, rigorous…

大量弱矩条件与干扰参数下的 GMM：一般理论及因果推断应用AI 解读

Weak identification arises in many statistical problems when key variables exhibit weak correlations-for example, when instrumental variables correlate weakly with treatment, or when proxy variables correlate weakly with unmeasured confounders. Under weak identification, standard estimation methods such as the generalized method of moments (GMM) can produce substantial bias, both in finite samples and asymptotically. This challenge is compounded in modern applications that…

多弱工具变量下的非参数工具变量推断AI 解读

We study inference on linear functionals in the nonparametric instrumental variable (NPIV) problem with a discretely-valued instrument under a many-weak-instruments asymptotic regime, where the number of instrument values grows with the sample size. A key motivating example is estimating long-term causal effects in a new experiment with only short-term outcomes, using past experiments to instrument for the effect of short- on long-term outcomes. Here, the assignment to a…

利用现代因果推断提高随机对照试验亚组分析的检验力AI 解读

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) often include subgroup analyses to assess whether treatment effects vary across pre-specified patient populations. However, these analyses frequently suffer from small sample sizes which limit the power to detect heterogeneous effects. Power can be improved by leveraging predictors of the outcome -- i.e., through covariate adjustment -- as well as by borrowing external data from similar RCTs or observational studies. The benefits of…

贝叶斯层级不变预测AI 解读

We propose Bayesian Hierarchical Invariant Prediction (BHIP) reframing Invariant Causal Prediction (ICP) through the lens of Hierarchical Bayes. We leverage the hierarchical structure to explicitly test invariance of causal mechanisms under heterogeneous data, resulting in improved computational scalability for a larger number of predictors compared to ICP. Moreover, given its Bayesian nature BHIP enables the use of prior information. We evaluate BHIP on both synthetic and…

删失选择模型的分布回归方法AI 解读

We develop a distribution regression model with a censored selection rule, offering a semi-parametric generalization of the Heckman selection model. Our approach applies to the entire distribution, extending beyond the mean or median, accommodates non-Gaussian error structures, and allows for heterogeneous effects of covariates on both the selection and outcome distributions. By employing a censored selection rule, our model can uncover richer selection patterns according to…

渐近有效的数据自适应惩罚收缩估计及其因果推断应用AI 解读

A rich literature exists on constructing non-parametric estimators with optimal asymptotic properties. In addition to asymptotic guarantees, it is often of interest to design estimators with desirable finite-sample properties; such as reduced mean-squared error of a large set of parameters. We provide examples drawn from causal inference where this may be the case, such as estimating a large number of group-specific treatment effects. We show how finite-sample properties of…

结局测量不同的研究整合用于因果推断时的警示AI 解读

Data integration approaches are increasingly used to enhance the efficiency and generalizability of studies. However, a key limitation of these methods is the assumption that outcome measures are identical across datasets -- an assumption that often does not hold in practice. Consider the following opioid use disorder (OUD) studies: the XBOT trial and the POAT study, both evaluating the effect of medications for OUD on withdrawal symptom severity (not the primary outcome of…

链接部分可观测的团队网络AI 解读

This paper studies a linear production model in team networks with missing links. In the model, heterogeneous workers, represented as nodes, produce jointly and repeatedly within teams, represented as links. Links are omitted when their associated outcome variables fall below a threshold, resulting in partial observability of the network. To address this, I propose a Generalized Method of Moments estimator under normally distributed errors and develop a distribution-free…

利用潜在干扰网络代理进行因果效应的贝叶斯估计AI 解读

Network interference occurs when treatments assigned to some units affect the outcomes of others. Traditional approaches often assume that the observed network correctly specifies the interference structure. However, in practice, researchers frequently only have access to proxy measurements of the interference network due to limitations in data collection or potential mismatches between measured networks and actual interference pathways. In this paper, we introduce a…

应调整哪些协变量？观察研究中对模型设定稳健的因果推断AI 解读

In observational causal inference, domain knowledge often leaves multiple covariate adjustments plausible, yet which sets satisfy ignorability is untestable. Different adjustment sets can yield conflicting estimates of the average treatment effect, and standard remedies (adjusting for their union or intersection, or reporting the union or convex hull of confidence intervals) can fail or produce intervals whose width does not vanish with sample size. We propose a…

rd2d：边界断点设计中的因果推断软件AI 解读

Boundary Discontinuity (BD) designs are used in empirical research to learn about causal treatment effects along a continuous assignment boundary defined by a bivariate score. These designs are also known as multi-score regression discontinuity (RD) designs, and include geographic RD designs as a prominent example. This article introduces \pkg{rd2d}, a statistical software package for \proglang{R}, \proglang{Python}, and \proglang{Stata} that implements local polynomial…

动态模型中的福利分析AI 解读

This paper introduces metrics for welfare analysis in dynamic models. We develop estimation and inference for these parameters even in the presence of a high-dimensional state space. Examples of welfare metrics include average welfare, average marginal welfare effects, and welfare decompositions into direct and indirect effects similar to Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973). We derive dual and doubly robust representations of welfare metrics that facilitate debiased inference.…

分层随机实验中的锐方差估计与因果自助法AI 解读

Randomized experiments are the gold standard for estimating treatment effects, and randomization serves as a reasoned basis for inference. In widely used stratified randomized experiments, randomization-based finite-population asymptotic theory enables valid inference for the average treatment effect, relying on normal approximation and a Neyman-type conservative variance estimator. However, when the sample size is small or the outcomes are skewed, the Neyman-type variance…