每日简报

不完备物理模型下异方差随机动力系统的因果发现AI 解读

Causal discovery is a data-driven paradigm for analyzing complex systems, while physics-based models, such as ordinary differential equations (ODEs), provide mechanistic structure for real-world dynamical processes. Integrating these paradigms can improve identifiability, stability, and robustness. However, real dynamical systems often exhibit cyclic interactions and nonstationarity, whereas many causal discovery methods rely on acyclicity, stationarity, or equilibrium…

具有潜在结构的社会互动模型AI 解读

This paper studies estimation and inference of heterogeneous social interactions featuring group fixed effects and slope heterogeneity under latent structure. Theoretically, in a binary choice model with social interactions we characterize the asymptotic bias of the slope coefficient due to the presence of high dimensional incidental parameters. Computationally, we invoke parametric bootstrap method to debias and establish asymptotic validity. Furthermore, tailored…

使用收缩估计量的自适应实验设计AI 解读

In multi-armed trials, adaptive designs are a popular way to increase estimation efficiency or identify optimal treatments. Several recent papers have proposed adaptive variants of the classical Neyman allocation to assign treatments in sequential trials, with the goal of minimizing the error of a Horvitz-Thompson-style estimator. However, this approach may be inefficient, because it fails to borrow information across the treatment arms. In this paper, we consider adaptivity…

生育惩罚的识别AI 解读

A large literature estimates child penalties using event studies by gender, normalizing by predicted earnings absent children and reporting the gender gap. This paper studies the identification framework underlying this strategy. Within gender, I argue that parallel trends is violated by selection into the timing of parenthood: higher human capital individuals delay childbirth and have steeper earnings trajectories. Between genders, I articulate the normalized design's…

We develop a semiparametric continuous time inferential framework for testing cumulative treatment effects, including both immediate and carryover effects. The latent state process is modeled by an ordinary differential equation (ODE) whose drift depends on state and treatment, while the observed data are noisy measurements of this latent state at irregular, multi resolution time points. We define the average treatment effect (ATE) as the difference of expected cumulative…

存在干扰的自我中心网络随机试验：污染敏感性分析AI 解读

Egocentric-Network Randomized Trials (ENRTs) are increasingly used to estimate causal effects under interference when measuring complete sociocentric network data is infeasible. ENRTs rely on egocentric network sampling, where a set of egos is first sampled, and each ego recruits a subset of its neighbors as alters. Treatments are then randomized across egos. While the observed ego-networks are disjoint by design, the underlying population network may contain edges…

控制变量存在内生关联时的遗漏变量偏误评估AI 解读

Omitted variables are one of the most important threats to the identification of causal effects. Several widely used methods assess the impact of omitted variables on empirical conclusions by comparing measures of selection on observables with measures of selection on unobservables. The recent literature has discussed various limitations of these existing methods, however. This includes challenges that arise when the omitted variables are endogenous, meaning that they are…

利用个体化处理效应评估处理效应异质性AI 解读

Assessing treatment effect heterogeneity (TEH) in clinical trials is crucial, as it provides insights into the variability of treatment responses among patients, influencing important decisions related to drug development. Furthermore, it can lead to personalized medicine by tailoring treatments to individual patient characteristics. This paper introduces novel methodologies for assessing treatment effects using the individual treatment effect as a basis. To estimate this…

析因双重差分AI 解读

We formulate factorial difference-in-differences (FDID), a research design that extends canonical difference-in-differences (DID) to settings in which an event affects all units. In many panel data applications, researchers exploit cross-sectional variation in a baseline factor alongside temporal variation in the event, but the corresponding estimand is often implicit and the justification for applying the DID estimator remains unclear. We frame FDID as a factorial design…

用约束线性回归估计混合分位数AI 解读

We study the problem of modeling univariate distributions via their quantile functions. We introduce a flexible family of distributions whose quantile function is a linear combination of basis quantiles. Because the model is linear in its parameters, estimation reduces to constrained linear regression, yielding a convex optimization problem that readily accommodates cardinality constraints as well as L1 or smoothness regularization. For Lq-type objectives we show the…

连接二值化与连续暴露：二分连续暴露的因果推断AI 解读

The average treatment effect (ATE) is a common parameter estimated in causal inference literature, but it is only defined for binary exposures. Thus, despite concerns raised by some researchers, many studies seeking to estimate the causal effect of a continuous exposure create a new binary exposure variable by dichotomizing the continuous values into two categories. In this paper, we affirm binarization as a statistically valid method for answering causal questions about…

球面数据的 Monge-Kantorovich 分位数正则化估计AI 解读

Tools from optimal transport (OT) theory have recently been used to define a notion of quantile function for directional data. In practice, regularization is mandatory for applications that require out-of-sample estimates. To this end, we introduce a regularized estimator built from entropic optimal transport, by extending the definition of the entropic map to the spherical setting. We propose a stochastic algorithm to directly solve a continuous OT problem between the…

面板数据的反事实预测AI 解读

We address the challenge of forecasting counterfactual outcomes in a panel data with missing entries and temporally dependent latent factors -- a common scenario in causal inference, where estimating unobserved potential outcomes ahead of time is essential. We propose Forecasting Counterfactuals under Stochastic Dynamics (FOCUS), a method that extends traditional matrix completion methods by leveraging time series dynamics of the factors, thereby enhancing the prediction…

差异性死亡或退出下既往事件率比方法的表现AI 解读

Purpose: Prior event rate ratio (PERR) method was proposed to control for measured or unmeasured confounders in real-world evaluation of effectiveness and safety of medical treatments using electronic medical records data. A widely cited simulation study showed that PERR estimate of treatment effect was biased in the presence of differential morality/dropout. However, the study only considered one specific PERR estimator of treatment effect and one specific scenario of…

事件时间过程中校准缩放干预的因果推断AI 解读

This work develops a flexible inferential framework for nonparametric causal inference in time-to-event settings, based on stochastic interventions defined through multiplicative scaling of the intensity governing an intermediate event process. These interventions induce a family of estimands indexed by a scalar parameter α, representing effects of modifying event rates while preserving the temporal and covariate-dependent structure of the observed data generating mechanism.…

有限混合模型的偏差缩减估计及面板潜在组结构应用AI 解读

Finite mixture models are widely used in econometric analyses to capture unobserved heterogeneity. This paper shows that maximum likelihood estimation of finite mixtures of parametric densities can suffer from substantial finite-sample bias in all parameters under mild regularity conditions. The bias arises from the influence of outliers in component densities with unbounded or large support and increases with the degree of overlap among mixture components. I show that…

理性预期下具有异质同伴效应的计数数据模型AI 解读

This paper develops a peer effect model for count responses under rational expectations. The model accounts for heterogeneity in peer effects across groups based on observed characteristics. Identification is based on the linear model condition that requires the presence of friends of friends who are not direct friends. I show that this identification condition extends to a broad class of nonlinear models. Parameters are estimated using a nested pseudo-likelihood approach.…

带业务约束的增量效应定向：营销策略的因果优化框架AI 解读

This paper introduces a marketing decision framework that optimizes customer targeting by integrating heterogeneous treatment effect estimation with explicit business guardrails. The objective is to maximize revenue and retention while adhering to constraints such as budget, revenue protection, and customer experience. The framework first estimates Conditional Average Treatment Effects (CATE) using uplift learners, then solves a constrained allocation problem to decide whom…

利用有效工具变量与机器学习推断异质处理效应AI 解读

We introduce a new instrumental variable (IV) estimator for heterogeneous treatment effects in the presence of endogeneity. Our estimator is based on double/debiased machine learning (DML) and uses efficient machine learning instruments (MLIV) and kernel smoothing. We prove consistency and asymptotic normality of our estimator and also construct confidence sets that are more robust towards weak IV. Along the way, we also provide an accessible discussion of the corresponding…

因果推断中的分布平衡：基于特征函数距离的统一框架AI 解读

Weighting methods are essential tools for estimating causal effects in observational studies, with the goal of balancing pre-treatment covariates across treatment groups. Traditional approaches pursue this objective indirectly, for example, via inverse propensity score weighting or by matching a finite number of covariate moments, and therefore do not guarantee balance of the full joint covariate distributions. Recently, distributional balancing methods have emerged as…

面板数据中集约边际效应的估计AI 解读

Many policies operate through two different channels: the extensive margin (e.g., the decision to participate) and the intensive margin (e.g., the intensity of the response among participants). This paper develops a novel identification strategy to estimate the intensive margin effect in panel data settings. I adapt the Horowitz-Manski-Lee bounds to the Changes-in-Changes framework to partially identify both the average and quantile intensive margin treatment effects.…

缺少干预前时期的面板数据因果融合AI 解读

Traditional panel-data causal inference frameworks, such as difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods, rely on pre-intervention data to estimate counterfactual means. However, such data may be unavailable in real-world settings when interventions are implemented in response to sudden events, such as public health crises or epidemiological shocks. In this paper, we introduce two data-fusion methods for causal inference from panel data in scenarios where…

一般工具变量下因果效应的识别与去偏学习AI 解读

Instrumental variable methods are fundamental to causal inference when treatment assignment is confounded by unobserved variables. In this article, we develop a general nonparametric causal framework for identification and learning with multi-categorical or continuous instrumental variables. Specifically, the mean potential outcomes and the average treatment effect can be identified via a regular weighting function derived from the proposed framework. Leveraging…

通过考虑推断的政策优化缓解赢家诅咒AI 解读

There has been a surge of recent interest in automatically learning policies to target treatment decisions based on rich individual covariates. In addition, practitioners want confidence that the learned policy has better performance than the incumbent policy according to downstream policy evaluation. However, due to the winner's curse -- an issue where the policy optimization procedure exploits prediction errors rather than finding actual improvements -- predicted…