每日简报

环境自适应协变量选择：分布外预测中何时利用伪相关AI 解读

A common approach to out-of-distribution prediction restricts models to causal or invariant covariates to avoid spurious associations that may change across environments. Despite its theoretical appeal, this strategy can underperform empirical risk minimization when only a subset of the causal parents of the outcome is observed. In such settings, non-causal covariates can serve as proxies for unobserved causal parents and improve prediction when the proxy relationship is…

从非结构化数据到需求反事实：理论与实践AI 解读

Empirical models of multi-product demand rely on low-dimensional product representations to capture substitution patterns, increasingly using proxies built from unstructured data. When proxies are imperfect, standard workflows yield biased counterfactuals and invalid inference. We develop a practical toolkit to address these issues. Our methods apply to market-level and/or individual data, require minimal additional computation, provide simple standard-error formulas, and…

无分位数交叉的分位数向量自回归AI 解读

This paper considers estimation and model selection of quantile vector autoregression (QVAR). Conventional quantile regression often yields undesirable crossing quantile curves, violating the monotonicity of quantiles. To address this issue, we propose a simplex quantile vector autoregression (SQVAR) framework, which transforms the autoregressive (AR) structure of the original QVAR model into a simplex, ensuring that the estimated quantile curves remain monotonic across all…

最小信息马尔可夫模型AI 解读

The analysis of high-dimensional time series data has become increasingly important across a wide range of fields. Recently, a method for constructing the minimum information Markov kernel on finite state spaces was established. In this study, we propose a statistical model based on a parametrization of its dependence function, which we call the \textit{Minimum Information Markov Model}. We show that its parametrization induces an orthogonal structure between the stationary…

潜在因子模型中的网络依赖检测：偏误修正 CD 检验AI 解读

In a recent paper Juodis and Reese (2022) (JR) show that the application of the CD test proposed by Pesaran (2004) to residuals from panels with latent factors results in over-rejection. They propose a randomized test statistic to correct for over-rejection, and add a screening component to achieve power. This paper considers the same problem but from a different perspective, and shows that the standard CD test remains valid if the latent factors are weak in the sense the…

面板局部投影中的 Nickell 偏误：金融危机损失可能被低估AI 解读

Panel local projection (LP) with fixed-effects (FE) is widely adopted for evaluating the economic consequences of financial crises across countries. This paper highlights a fundamental methodological issue: the presence of the Nickell bias in the panel FE estimator due to inherent dynamic structures of predictive specifications, even if the regressors have no lagged dependent variables. The Nickell bias invalidates the standard inferential procedure based on the $t$-statistic…

无条件分位数效应的敏感性分析AI 解读

This paper proposes a framework to analyze the effects of counterfactual policies on the unconditional quantiles of an outcome variable. For a given counterfactual policy, we obtain identified sets for the effect of both marginal and global changes in the proportion of treated individuals. To conduct a sensitivity analysis, we introduce the quantile breakdown frontier, a curve that (i) indicates whether a sensitivity analysis is possible or not, and (ii) when a sensitivity…

集群随机试验中间接效应与溢出效应的半参数因果中介分析AI 解读

In cluster-randomized trials (CRTs), there is emerging interest in exploring the causal mechanism in which a cluster-level treatment affects the outcome through an intermediate outcome. The majority of existing causal mediation methods are applicable to independent data and only a few exceptions have considered assessing causal mediation in CRTs, all of which heavily depend on parametric assumptions. In this article, we develop a formal semiparametric efficiency theory to…

用于随机试验与外部数据混合研究的实验选择交叉验证 TMLEAI 解读

Augmenting a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with external data may increase power at the risk of introducing bias. To select and analyze the experiment (RCT alone or combined with external data) with the optimal bias-variance tradeoff, we develop a novel experiment-selector cross-validated targeted maximum likelihood estimator for randomized-external data studies (ES-CVTMLE). This estimator utilizes two estimates of bias to determine whether to integrate external data…

基于组 Lasso 选择的高维中介分析AI 解读

Mediation analysis aims to identify and estimate the effect of an exposure on an outcome that is mediated through one or more intermediate variables. In the presence of multiple intermediate variables, two pertinent methodological questions arise: estimating mediated effects when mediators are correlated, and performing high-dimensional mediation analyses when the number of mediators exceeds the sample size. This paper presents a two-step procedure for high-dimensional…

通过监督扩散进行潜变量建模AI 解读

This paper proposes a new methodological framework for estimating inferential models with latent variables. It also introduces a new latent variable regression model called LARX: an extension of the ubiquitous autoregressive model with exogenous inputs (ARX) in which any or all input variables can be latent. In deriving the LARX model, a minor contribution is also made to the field of matrix calculus: A new matrix operator is defined and applied to solve a class of…

协变量调整的可解释广义因子模型推断及测验公平性应用AI 解读

Latent variable models are popularly used to measure latent factors (e.g., abilities and personalities) from large-scale assessment data. Beyond understanding these latent factors, the covariate effect on responses controlling for latent factors is also of great scientific interest and has wide applications, such as evaluating the fairness of educational testing, where the covariate effect reflects whether a test question is biased toward certain individual characteristics…

信息提供实验中的因果效应识别AI 解读

Standard estimators in information provision experiments place more weight on individuals who update their beliefs more in response to new information. This paper shows that, in practice, these individuals who update the most have the weakest causal effects of beliefs on outcomes. Standard estimators therefore understate these causal effects. I propose an alternative local least squares (LLS) estimator that recovers a representative unweighted average effect in a broad class…

状态转换模型中得分与 Hessian 矩阵的递归计算AI 解读

This study proposes a recursive and easy-to-implement algorithm to compute the score and Hessian matrix in general regime-switching models. We use simulation to compare the asymptotic variance estimates constructed from the Hessian matrix and the outer product of the score. The results favor the latter.

We consider statistical inference in high-dimensional regression problems under affine constraints on the parameter space. The theoretical study of this is motivated by the study of genetic determinants of diseases, such as diabetes, using external information from mediating protein expression levels. Specifically, we develop rigorous methods for estimating genetic effects on diabetes-related continuous outcomes when these associations are constrained based on external…

We prove that training a source model optimally for its own task is generically suboptimal when the objective is downstream transfer. We study the source-side optimization problem in L2-SP ridge regression and show a fundamental mismatch between the source-optimal and transfer-optimal source regularization: outside of a measure-zero set, $τ_0^* \neq τ_S^*$. We characterize the transfer-optimal source penalty $τ_0^*$ as a function of task alignment and identify an…

We characterise the behavior of the maximum Diaconis--Ylvisaker prior penalized likelihood estimator in high-dimensional logistic regression, where the number of covariates is a fraction $κ\in (0,1)$ of the number of observations $n$, as $n \to \infty$. We construct a rescaled estimator with zero asymptotic aggregate bias and define adjusted $Z$-statistics and rescaled penalized likelihood ratio statistics that exhibit the typical null asymptotic distributions, when the…

一般线性泛函估计的尖锐结构无关下界AI 解读

We establish a general statistical optimality theory for estimation problems where the target parameter is a linear functional of an unknown nuisance component that must be estimated from data. This formulation covers many causal and predictive parameters and has applications to numerous disciplines. We adopt the structure-agnostic framework introduced by \citet{balakrishnan2023fundamental}, which poses no structural properties on the nuisance functions other than access to…

部分数据缺失下的广义矩估计AI 解读

We consider a generalized method of moments framework in which a part of the data vector is missing for some units in a completely unrestricted, potentially endogenous way. In this setup, the parameters of interest are usually only partially identified. We characterize the identified set for such parameters using the support function of the convex set of moment predictions consistent with the data. This identified set is sharp, valid for both continuous and discrete data,…

单纯形约束权重的简便统计推断AI 解读

In many applications, the parameter of interest involves a simplex-valued weight which is identified as a solution to an optimization problem. Examples include synthetic control methods with group-level weights and various methods of model averaging and forecast combinations. The simplex constraint on the weight poses a challenge in statistical inference due to the constraint potentially binding. In this paper, we propose a simple method of constructing a confidence set for…

基于 EM 算法与卡尔曼滤波的大型近似动态矩阵因子模型估计AI 解读

This paper considers an approximate dynamic matrix factor model that accounts for the time series nature of the data by explicitly modelling the time evolution of the factors. We study estimation of the model parameters based on the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm, implemented jointly with the Kalman smoother which gives estimates of the factors. We establish the consistency of the estimated loadings and factor matrices as the sample size $T$ and the matrix…

双重机器学习中病态正交得分的误差放大AI 解读

Double Machine Learning is often justified by nuisance-rate conditions, yet finite-sample reliability also depends on the conditioning of the orthogonal-score Jacobian. This conditioning is typically assumed rather than tracked. When residualized treatment variance is small, the Jacobian is ill-conditioned and small systematic nuisance errors can be amplified, so nominal confidence intervals may look precise yet systematically under-cover. Our main result is an exact…

边界处局部多项式密度估计的核函数选择AI 解读

Local polynomial density (LPD) estimators are widely used for inference on boundary features of the density function. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we show that kernel choice substantially affects efficiency. Theory, simulations, and empirical evidence indicate that the popular triangular kernel delivers large mean squared error, wide confidence intervals, and limited power for detecting discontinuities. Moreover, small-sample variance can explode because the…

聚合处理变量的因果推断AI 解读

In this paper, we study causal inference when the treatment variable is an aggregation of multiple sub-treatment variables. Researchers often report marginal causal effects for the aggregated treatment, implicitly assuming that the target parameter corresponds to a well-defined average of sub-treatment effects. We show that, even in an ideal scenario for causal inference such as random assignment, the weights underlying this average have some key undesirable properties: they…