每日简报

建筑材料价格的细粒度预测：计量与机器学习方法AI 解读

The persistent volatility of construction material prices poses significant risks to cost estimation, budgeting, and project delivery, underscoring the urgent need for granular and scalable forecasting methods. This study develops a forecasting framework that leverages the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) MasterFormat as the target data structure, enabling predictions at the six-digit section level and supporting detailed cost projections across a wide spectrum of…

全贝叶斯分层线性模型的变分推断AI 解读

Bayesian hierarchical linear models provide a natural framework to analyze nested and clustered data. Classical estimation with Markov chain Monte Carlo produces well calibrated posterior distributions but becomes computationally expensive in high dimensional or large sample settings. Variational Inference and Stochastic Variational Inference offer faster optimization based alternatives, but their accuracy in hierarchical structures is uncertain when group separation is…

成绩测量误差影响处理分配时的倾向得分调整AI 解读

U.S. state education agencies mark schools displaying achievement gaps between demographic subgroups as needing improvement. Some schools may have few students in these subgroups, such that average end-of-year test scores only noisily measure the average "true" score-the score one would expect if students took the test many times. This, in addition to the masking of small subgroup averages in publicly available assessment data, poses challenges for evaluating interventions…

基于轮廓 M 估计的高维回归去偏推断AI 解读

Debiased inference for high-dimensional regression models has received substantial recent attention to ensure regularized estimators have valid inference. Many existing methods focus on achieving Neyman orthogonality through explicitly constructing projections onto the space of nuisance parameters, which is infeasible when an explicit form of the projection is unavailable. We introduce a general debiasing framework, Debiased Profile $M$-Estimation (DPME), which applies to a…

内生中介下适用于任意结果变量的简便直接与间接效应分解AI 解读

Given a binary treatment D and a binary mediator M, mediation analysis decomposes the total effect of D on an outcome Y into the direct and indirect effects. Typically, both D and M are assumed to be exogenous, but this paper allows M to be endogenous while maintaining the exogeneity of D, which holds certainly if D is randomized. The endogeneity problem of M is then overcome using a binary instrumental variable Z. We derive a nonparametric "causal reduced form (CRF)" for Y…

指数随机图模型的变分正则化双层估计AI 解读

I propose an estimation algorithm for Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM), a popular statistical network model for estimating the structural parameters of strategic network formation in economics and finance. Existing methods often produce unreliable estimates of parameters for the triangle, a key network structure that captures the tendency of two individuals with friends in common to connect. Such unreliable estimates may lead to untrustworthy policy recommendations for…

干扰下的因果推断：计算障碍与算法解决方案AI 解读

We study causal effect estimation under interference from network data. We work under the chain-graph formulation pioneered in Tchetgen Tchetgen et. al (2021). Our first result shows that polynomial time evaluation of treatment effects is computationally hard in this framework without additional assumptions on the underlying chain graph. Subsequently, we assume that the interactions among the study units are governed either by (i) a dense graph or (ii) an i.i.d. Gaussian…

一般条件矩下结构参数的自动去偏机器学习AI 解读

This paper proposes a method to automatically construct or estimate Neyman-orthogonal moments in general models defined by a finite number of conditional moment restrictions (CMRs), with possibly different conditioning variables and endogenous regressors. CMRs are allowed to depend on non-parametric components, which might be flexibly modeled using Machine Learning tools, and non-linearly on finite-dimensional parameters. The key step in this construction is the estimation…

面向处理选择的极小极大与贝叶斯最优自适应实验设计AI 解读

We consider an adaptive experiment for treatment choice and design a minimax and Bayes optimal adaptive experiment with respect to regret. Given binary treatments, the experimenter's goal is to choose the treatment with the highest expected outcome through an adaptive experiment, in order to maximize welfare. We consider adaptive experiments that consist of two phases, the treatment allocation phase and the treatment choice phase. The experiment starts with the treatment…

区间数据下的双重差分AI 解读

Difference-in-differences (DID) is one of the most popular tools used to evaluate causal effects of policy interventions. This paper extends the DID methodology to accommodate interval outcomes, which are often encountered in empirical studies using survey or administrative data. We point out that a naive application or extension of the conventional parallel trends assumption may yield uninformative or counterintuitive results, and present a suitable identification strategy,…

多决策时点下个体处理效应的共形预测区间AI 解读

Accurately quantifying uncertainty of individual treatment effects (ITEs) across multiple decision points is crucial for personalized decision-making in fields such as healthcare, finance, education, and online marketplaces. Previous work has focused on predicting non-causal longitudinal estimands or constructing prediction bands for ITEs using cross-sectional data based on exchangeability assumptions. We propose a novel method for constructing prediction intervals using…

产前酒精暴露与儿童认知：半连续暴露的因果推断与证据综合AI 解读

We address the challenge of causal inference status and the dose-response effects with a semi-continuous exposure. A two-stage approach is proposed using estimating equation for multiple outcomes with large sample properties derived for the resulting estimators. Homogeneity tests are developed to assess whether causal effects of exposure status and the dose-response effects are the same across multiple outcomes. A global homogeneity test is also developed to assess whether…

高维回归模型的去偏贝叶斯推断AI 解读

There has been significant progress in Bayesian inference based on sparsity-inducing (e.g., spike-and-slab and horseshoe-type) priors for high-dimensional regression models. The resulting posteriors, however, in general do not possess desirable frequentist properties, and the credible sets thus cannot serve as valid confidence sets even asymptotically. We introduce a novel debiasing approach that corrects the bias for the entire Bayesian posterior distribution. We establish…

因果中介分析的平衡权重AI 解读

This paper develops methods for estimating the natural direct and indirect effects in causal mediation analysis. The efficient influence function-based estimator (EIF-based estimator) and the inverse probability weighting estimator (IPW estimator), which are standard in causal mediation analysis, both rely on the inverse of the estimated propensity scores, and thus they are vulnerable to two key issues (i) instability and (ii) finite-sample covariate imbalance. We propose…

全连接深度神经网络的新逼近结果与最优估计AI 解读

\citet{farrell2021deep} establish non-asymptotic high-probability bounds for general deep feedforward neural network (with rectified linear unit activation function) estimators, with \citet[Theorem 1]{farrell2021deep} achieving a suboptimal convergence rate for fully connected feedforward networks. The authors suggest that improved approximation of fully connected networks could yield sharper versions of \citet[Theorem 1]{farrell2021deep} without altering the theoretical…

价格暴露设计的微观基础与因果解释AI 解读

This paper studies regional exposure designs that use commodity prices as instruments to study local effects of aggregate shocks. Unlike standard shift share designs that leverage differential exposure to many shocks, the price exposure relies on exogenous variation from a single shock, leading to challenges for both identification and inference. We motivate the design using a multi sector labor model. Under the model and a potential outcomes framework, we characterize the…

分批自适应实验的统计推断AI 解读

The advantages of adaptive experiments have led to their rapid adoption in economics, other fields, as well as among practitioners. However, adaptive experiments pose challenges for causal inference. This note suggests a BOLS (batched ordinary least squares) test statistic for inference of treatment effects in adaptive experiments. The statistic provides a precision-equalizing aggregation of per-period treatment-control differences under heteroskedasticity. The combined test…

图上的拓扑识别与推断AI 解读

Topology identification and inference of processes evolving over graphs arise in timely applications involving brain, transportation, financial, power, as well as social and information networks. This chapter provides an overview of graph topology identification and statistical inference methods for multidimensional relational data. Approaches for undirected links connecting graph nodes are outlined, going all the way from correlation metrics to covariance selection, and…

长记忆网络时间序列AI 解读

Many scientific areas, from computer science to the environmental sciences and finance, give rise to multivariate time series which exhibit long memory, or loosely put, a slow decay in their autocorrelation structure. Efficient modelling and estimation in such settings is key for a number of analysis tasks, such as accurate prediction. However, traditional approaches for modelling such data, for example long memory vector autoregressive processes, are challenging even in…

利用微分熵差异检验参数分布族假设AI 解读

We introduce a broadly applicable statistical procedure for testing which parametric distribution family generated a random sample of data. The method, termed the Difference in Differential Entropy (DDE) test, provides a unified framework applicable to a wide range of distributional families, with asymptotic validity grounded in established maximum likelihood, bootstrap, and kernel density estimation principles. The test is straightforward to implement, computationally…

平稳时间序列的网络估计AI 解读

High-dimensional multivariate time series are common in many scientific and industrial applications, where the interest lies in identifying key dependence structure within the data for subsequent analysis tasks, such as forecasting. An important avenue to achieve this is through the estimation of the conditional independence graph via graphical models, although for time series data settings the underpinning temporal dependence can make this task challenging. In this article,…

修改处理政策的近端因果推断AI 解读

The proximal causal inference framework enables the identification and estimation of causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding by leveraging two disjoint sets of observed strong proxies: negative control treatments and negative control outcomes. In the point exposure setting, this framework has primarily been applied to estimands comparing counterfactual outcomes under a static fixed intervention or, possibly randomized, regime that depends on baseline…

具有单位根的动态 Tobit 模型估计AI 解读

This paper studies robust estimation in the dynamic Tobit model under local-to-unity (LUR) asymptotics. We show that both Gaussian maximum likelihood (ML) and censored least absolute deviations (CLAD) estimators are consistent, extending results from the stationary case where ordinary least squares (OLS) is inconsistent. The asymptotic distributions of MLE and CLAD are derived; for the short-run parameters they are shown to be Gaussian, yielding standard normal t-statistics.…

用图形 Lasso 与分位数对分位数回归研究幸福感与可持续发展的联系AI 解读

This paper investigates the nexus between subjective well-being and sustainability, proxied by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index, using cross-country data from 126 nations in 2022. While prior research has highlighted a positive association between happiness and sustainable development, existing approaches largely rely on linear regressions or correlation-based measures that mask distributional heterogeneity, multicollinearity, and potential nonlinear dependence.…