每日简报

文本因果推断中的处理信息泄漏：检测、蒸馏与敏感性分析AI 解读

Text-based causal inference increasingly employs textual data as proxies for unobserved confounders, yet this approach introduces a previously undertheorized source of bias: treatment leakage. Treatment leakage occurs when text intended to capture confounding information also contains signals predictive of treatment status, thereby inducing post-treatment bias in causal estimates. Critically, this problem can arise even when documents precede treatment assignment, as authors…

有限总体中的单调性检验AI 解读

We consider the extent to which we can learn from a completely randomized experiment whether all individuals have treatment effects that are weakly of the same sign, a condition we call monotonicity. From a classical sampling perspective, it is well-known that monotonicity is not falsifiable. We show that from the design-based perspective---in which the potential outcomes are fixed and only treatment assignment is stochastic---that the distribution of treatment effects in…

多种处理版本下的识别与估计：混合专家方法AI 解读

The Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA) includes the condition that there are no multiple versions of treatment in causal inference. Though we could not control the implementation of treatment in observational studies, multiple versions may exist in the treatment. It has been pointed out that ignoring such multiple versions of treatment can lead to biased estimates of causal effects, but a causal inference framework that explicitly deals with the unbiased…

利用工具变量评估反事实政策AI 解读

We study settings in which a researcher has an instrumental variable (IV) and seeks to evaluate the effects of a counterfactual policy that alters treatment assignment, such as a directive encouraging randomly assigned judges to release more defendants. We develop a general and computationally tractable framework for computing sharp bounds on the effects of such policies. Our approach does not require the often tenuous IV monotonicity assumption. Moreover, for an important…

无外生产品特征时的需求非参数识别AI 解读

We study identification of differentiated product demand from market-level data when product characteristics can be endogenous. Past work suggests nonparametric identification may be impossible: that is, in addition to standard price instruments, exogenous characteristic-based instruments are essentially necessary to identify sufficiently flexible demand models with standard index restrictions. We show, however, that price counterfactuals are nonparametrically identified…

彩色弹球：面向共形预测条件保证的密度加权分位数回归AI 解读

Although conformal prediction provides robust marginal coverage guarantees, achieving reliable conditional coverage for specific inputs remains challenging. While exact distribution-free conditional coverage is impossible with finite samples, recent work has focused on improving the conditional coverage of standard conformal procedures. Distinct from approaches that target relaxed notions of conditional coverage, we directly target the mean squared error of conditional…

从模型选择到模型信念：建立大语言模型研究的新度量AI 解读

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used to simulate human behavior, but common practices to use LLM-generated data are inefficient. Treating an LLM's output ("model choice") as a single data point underutilizes the information inherent to the probabilistic nature of LLMs. This paper introduces and formalizes "model belief," a measure derived from an LLM's token-level probabilities that captures the model's belief distribution over choice alternatives in a single…

概率建模足以开展因果推断AI 解读

Causal inference is a key research area in machine learning, yet confusion reigns over the tools needed to tackle it. There are prevalent claims in the machine learning literature that you need a bespoke causal framework or notation to answer causal questions. In this paper, we want to make it clear that you \emph{can} answer any causal inference question within the realm of probabilistic modelling and inference, without causal-specific tools or notation. Through concrete…

弱工具变量下局部平均处理效应的外推AI 解读

To evaluate the effectiveness of a counterfactual policy, it is often necessary to extrapolate treatment effects on compliers to broader populations. This extrapolation relies on exogenous variation in instruments, which is often weak in practice. This limited variation leads to invalid confidence intervals that are typically too short and cannot be accurately detected by classical methods. For instance, the F-test may falsely conclude that the instruments are strong.…

随机试验中有序结果透明总体汇总指标的模型辅助贝叶斯估计AI 解读

In randomized controlled trials, ordinal outcomes typically improve statistical efficiency over binary outcomes. The treatment effect on an ordinal outcome is usually described by the odds ratio from a proportional odds model, but this summary measure lacks transparency with respect to its emphasis on the components of the ordinal outcome when proportional odds is violated. We propose various summary measures for ordinal outcomes that are fully transparent in this regard,…

真正非平衡动态网络面板模型的准最大似然估计AI 解读

This paper develops a quasi-maximum likelihood estimator for genuinely unbalanced dynamic network panel data models with individual fixed effects. We propose a model that accommodates contemporaneous and lagged network spillovers, temporal dependence, and a listing effect that activates upon a unit's first appearance in the panel. We establish the consistency of the QMLE as both $N$ and $T$ go to infinity, derive its asymptotic distribution, and identify an asymptotic bias…

观测数据中有效且高效的两阶段潜在子组分析AI 解读

Subgroup analysis evaluates treatment effects across multiple sub-populations. When subgroups are defined by latent memberships inferred from imperfect measurements, the analysis typically involves two inter-connected models, a latent class model and a subgroup outcome model. The classical one-stage framework, which models the joint distribution of the two models, may be infeasible with observational data containing many confounders. The two-stage framework, which first…

二部网络干扰下的公平政策学习：公平且具成本效益的环境政策AI 解读

Numerous studies have shown the harmful effects of airborne pollutants on human health. Vulnerable groups and communities often bear a disproportionately larger health burden due to exposure to airborne pollutants. Thus, there is a need to design policies that effectively reduce the public health burdens while ensuring cost-effective policy interventions. Designing policies that optimally benefit the population while ensuring equity between groups under cost constraints is a…

结合双重负向控制与图神经网络的双重差分：处理未观测网络混杂AI 解读

Estimating causal effects from observational network data faces dual challenges of network interference and unmeasured confounding. To address this, we propose a general Difference-in-Differences framework that integrates double negative controls (DNC) and graph neural networks (GNNs). Based on the modified parallel trends assumption and DNC, semiparametric identification of direct and indirect causal effects is established. We then propose doubly robust estimators.…

HOLOGRAPH：通过层论对齐大语言模型先验的主动因果发现AI 解读

Causal discovery from observational data remains fundamentally limited by identifiability constraints. Recent work has explored leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) as sources of prior causal knowledge, but existing approaches rely on heuristic integration that lacks theoretical grounding. We introduce HOLOGRAPH, a framework that formalizes LLM-guided causal discovery through sheaf theory--representing local causal beliefs as sections of a presheaf over variable subsets.…

不完全结构模型的分布匹配后验推断AI 解读

This paper introduces a Bayesian inference framework for incomplete structural models, termed distribution-matching posterior inference (DMPI). Extending the minimal econometric interpretation (MEI), DMPI constructs a divergence-based quasi-likelihood using the Jensen-Shannon divergence between theoretical and empirical population-moment distributions, based on a Dirichlet-multinomial structure with additive smoothing. The framework accommodates model misspecification and…

普通病区患者安置优化：以工具变量因果森林降低死亡率AI 解读

Normal care units (NCU) placement affects health outcomes. NCUs in a hospital have different specialisations. There are patients that can potentially stay in multiple different NCUs. On a given day the NCUs are on different utilisation levels, which also affects health outcomes. Our approach uses instrumental variable causal forests, with emergency admission as an instrument, to estimate how the effect of NCU placement varies across patients and utilisation levels. The…

终末事件存在时复发事件处理效应的模型辅助因果推断AI 解读

This paper is motivated by evaluating the benefits of patients receiving mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices in end-stage heart failure management inference, in which hypothesis testing for a treatment effect on the risk of recurrent events is challenged in the presence of terminal events. Existing methods based on cumulative frequency unreasonably disadvantage longer survivors as they tend to experience more recurrent events. The While-Alive-based (WA) test has…

理解近端因果推断AI 解读

Proximal causal inference (PCI) has emerged as a promising framework for identifying and estimating causal effects in the presence of unobserved confounders. While many traditional causal inference methods rely on the assumption of no unobserved confounding, this assumption is likely often violated. PCI addresses this challenge by relying on an alternative set of assumptions regarding the relationships between treatment, outcome, and auxiliary variables that serve as proxies…

用于异质性处理效应可扩展推断的倾向得分拼接克里金AI 解读

Gaussian process-based models are attractive for estimating heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE), but their computational cost limits scalability in causal inference settings. In this work, we address this challenge by extending Patchwork Kriging into the causal inference framework. Our proposed method partitions the data according to the estimated propensity score and applies Patchwork Kriging to enforce continuity of HTE estimates across adjacent regions. By imposing…

自适应实验的连续时间渐近表示AI 解读

This article develops a continuous-time asymptotic framework for analyzing adaptive experiments -- settings in which data collection and treatment assignment evolve dynamically in response to incoming information. A key challenge in analyzing fully adaptive experiments, where the assignment policy is updated after each observation, is that the sequence of policy rules often lack a well-defined asymptotic limit. To address this, we focus instead on the empirical allocation…

加性工具变量下连续处理效应的双重机器学习AI 解读

Estimating causal effects of continuous treatments is a common problem in practice, for example, in studying average dose-response functions. Classical analyses typically assume that all confounders are fully observed, whereas in real-world applications, unmeasured confounding often persists. In this article, we propose a novel framework for the identification of average dose-response functions using instrumental variables, thereby mitigating bias induced by unobserved…

具有分组边效应的降秩网络自回归AI 解读

We propose the Edge-Grouped Reduced-Rank Network Autoregressive model (Edge-Grouped RRNAR) for multivariate time series observed over a network. The model allows transmission effects to vary across prespecified and economically interpretable groups of edges, while using a low-rank structure to capture cross-variable dynamics. This structure separates where network transmission occurs from which variables transmit and respond. We develop a topology-aware and block-specific…

连续处理下的双重差分AI 解读

This paper analyzes difference-in-differences designs with a continuous treatment. We show that treatment-on-the-treated-type parameters are identified under a parallel trends assumption analogous to the binary treatment case. However, comparing these parameters across treatments is challenging because parallel trends does not rule out selection bias. We discuss alternative, typically stronger, assumptions that eliminate selection bias. We further show that popular two-way…