每日简报

条件分布处理效应：双重稳健估计与检验AI 解读

Beyond conditional average treatment effects, treatments may impact the entire outcome distribution in covariate-dependent ways, for example, by altering the variance or tail risks for specific subpopulations. We propose a novel estimand to capture such conditional distributional treatment effects, and develop a doubly robust estimator that is minimax optimal in the local asymptotic sense. Using this, we develop a test for the global homogeneity of conditional potential…

Wasserstein 分布稳健分位数回归AI 解读

We study distributionally robust quantile regression using type-$p$ Wasserstein ambiguity sets. We derive a closed-form expression for the worst-case quantile regression loss under general $p$-Wasserstein uncertainty. We further give a uniqueness result showing that for $p>1$, the check loss yields the only class of convex loss functions for which such an additive Wasserstein regularization holds. Our analysis also uncovers qualitative differences between the regimes $p=1$ an…

阿尔茨海默病纵向数据的贝叶斯张量分位数回归AI 解读

As a general and robust alternative to traditional mean regression models, quantile regression avoids the assumption of normally distributed errors, making it a versatile choice when modeling outcomes such as cognitive scores that typically have skewed distributions. Motivated by an application to Alzheimer's disease data where the aim is to explore how brain-behavior associations change over time, we propose a novel Bayesian tensor quantile regression for high-dimensional…

张量网络依赖下的高维逻辑回归推断AI 解读

We investigate the problem of statistical inference for logistic regression with high-dimensional covariates in settings where dependence among individuals is induced by an underlying Markov random field. Going beyond the pairwise interaction models such as the Ising model, we consider a framework to accommodate more general tensor structures that capture higher-order dependencies. We develop a two-step procedure for low-dimensional linear and quadratic functionals. The…

双边市场双重随机化实验的回归调整AI 解读

Multiple randomization designs (MRDs) are a class of experimental designs used to handle interference in two-sided marketplaces. We investigate regression adjustment strategies for estimating total, spillover, and direct effects in MRDs. We derive minimum asymptotic variance estimators among a broad class of linearly adjusted estimators, without assuming a linear model on the potential outcomes. Surprisingly, the optimal regression adjustments are estimable from data and are…

目标试验模拟中的时间划分AI 解读

In target trial emulation, time partitioning enables researchers to handle time-varying confounders and immortal time bias with appropriate methods. Based on two clinical scenarios, this study aimed to explore issues related to time partitioning and to provide guidance for trial emulation. After formalizing the research question within the framework of structural causal models, we show how a given time partitioning may be too fine or too coarse depending on the clinical…

多暴露与多结局的空间因果张量补全：PFAS 污染健康效应应用AI 解读

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are typically encountered as mixtures of distinct chemicals with distinct effects on multiple health outcomes. Estimating joint causal effects using spatially-dependent observed data is challenging. We propose a spatial causal tensor completion framework that jointly models multiple exposures and outcomes within a low-rank tensor structure, while adjusting for observed confounders and latent spatial confounders. This method combines…

实验密集环境下通过最优资源配置降低第二类错误AI 解读

Randomized experiments (often known as "A/B tests") are widely used to evaluate product and service innovations. We study how to allocate limited experimentation resources across M concurrent experiments in an experiment-rich regime. Existing work on allocation has predominantly focused on minimizing the worst-case mean squared error (MSE) of estimated treatment effects, which favors experiments with larger (and typically unknown) outcome variance. While appropriate for…

协变量不匹配下通过双重校准改善随机试验的条件平均治疗效应估计AI 解读

We develop estimators that improve precision of heterogeneous treatment effect estimates that allow borrowing information from observational studies when the available covariates in each data source do not perfectly match. Standard data-borrowing methods often assume perfectly matched covariates. We propose MR-OSCAR, an RCT-calibrated, two-stage estimation approach that first predicts the trial-missing variables using the observational data via imputation and then calibrates…

聚类数据下回归不连续设计的推断AI 解读

Clustered sampling is prevalent in empirical regression discontinuity (RD) designs, but it has not received much attention in the theoretical literature. In this paper, we introduce a general model-based framework for such settings and derive high-level conditions under which the standard local linear RD estimator is asymptotically normal. We verify that our high-level assumptions hold across a wide range of empirical designs, including settings of growing cluster sizes. We…

合成控制的常见误解与实践建议AI 解读

To estimate the causal effect of an intervention, researchers need to identify a control group that represents what might have happened to the treatment group in the absence of that intervention. This is challenging without a randomized experiment and further complicated when few units (possibly only one) are treated. Nevertheless, when data are available on units over time, synthetic control (SC) methods provide an opportunity to construct a valid comparison by…

时间序列预测何时具有因果含义？潜在系统与动态因果效应AI 解读

The potential system is a nonparametric time series model for assessing the causal impact of moving an assignment at time $t$ on an outcome at future time $t+h$, accounting for the presence of features. The potential system provides nonparametric content for, e.g., time series experiments, time series regression, local projection, impulse response functions and SVARs. It closes a gap between time series causality and nonparametric cross-sectional causal methods, and provides…

静态面板工具变量模型的双重机器学习：方法与应用AI 解读

Panel data methods are widely used in empirical analysis to address unobserved heterogeneity, but causal inference remains challenging when treatments are endogenous and confounding variables high-dimensional and potentially nonlinear. Standard instrumental variables (IV) estimators, such as two-stage least squares (2SLS), become unreliable when instrument validity requires flexibly conditioning on many covariates with potentially non-linear effects. This paper develops a…

线性混合因果表征的多域经验贝叶斯学习AI 解读

Causal representation learning (CRL) aims to learn low-dimensional causal latent variables from high-dimensional observations. While identifiability has been extensively studied for CRL, estimation has been less explored. In this paper, we explore the use of empirical Bayes (EB) to estimate causal representations. In particular, we consider the problem of learning from data from multiple domains, where differences between domains are modeled by interventions in a shared…

结构性冲击强度：利用西班牙行政数据研究最低工资的方法框架AI 解读

We study the employment effects of the 22% increase in the Spanish minimum wage in 2019, focusing on young workers. Using census-grade administrative tax data covering the universe of formal wage bills and employment (Models 190/390 linked to personal income tax records), we construct several measures of treatment intensity, including two structurally grounded bite indicators based on the incidence of young minimum-wage workers and the implied increase in the wage bill…

临床试验替代标志物评价中的缺失数据校正AI 解读

Evaluating treatment effects is critical in clinical trials but sometimes involves lengthy, invasive, or costly follow-up procedures. In these cases, surrogate markers, which provide intermediate measures of the long-term treatment effect, allow clinicians to obtain results faster and more efficiently than would have otherwise been possible. Prior to adoption, it is vital that the utility of surrogate markers (i.e., their ability to capture the treatment effect on the…

利用神经网络高斯过程联合学习动态多层图与节点属性AI 解读

Exploring the dynamic co-evolution of multiplex graphs and nodal attributes is a compelling question in criminal and terrorism networks. This article is motivated by the study of dynamically evolving interactions among prominent terrorist organizations, considering various organizational attributes like size, ideology, leadership, and operational capacity. Statistically principled integration of multiplex graphs with nodal attributes is significantly challenging due to the…

用于因果中介分析的序贯传输AI 解读

We propose sequential transport (ST), a distributional framework for mediation analysis that combines optimal transport (OT) with a mediator directed acyclic graph (DAG). Instead of relying on cross-world counterfactual assumptions, ST constructs unit-level mediator counterfactuals by minimally transporting each mediator, either marginally or conditionally, toward its distribution under an alternative treatment while preserving the causal dependencies encoded by the DAG. For…

随机饱和度设计中簇内与簇间溢出效应的估计AI 解读

Randomized saturation designs are two-stage experiments: they first randomly assign treatment probabilities over the clusters and then randomly assign the treatment to the units within the clusters. The existing literature on randomized saturation designs focuses on estimating within-cluster spillover effects by assuming away between-cluster spillover effects. However, the units may interact across clusters in many practical randomized saturation designs. A leading example…

异质环境下的不变量分位数回归AI 解读

In this paper, we propose an invariant quantile regression (IQR) framework specifically designed for multi-environment datasets, which captures the invariance across different environments. This framework is closely related to transfer learning, causal inference, and fair machine learning, and is motivated by scenarios in which the conditional probability of the response given covariates varies, while certain key variables remain invariant. This perspective differs notably…

结合数据驱动模型选择的自适应去偏机器学习AI 解读

Debiased machine learning estimators for smooth functionals in nonparametric models can exhibit substantial variability and instability, often leading practitioners to instead rely on parametric or semiparametric working models. Such models, however, may be misspecified and can therefore introduce bias. We study how data-driven model selection can be combined with debiased machine learning to construct estimators that adapt to structure in the data-generating distribution.…

使用网络中心性指标的线性回归AI 解读

This paper studies the properties of linear regression on centrality measures when network data is sparse and observed with error. We make three contributions in this setting. First, we show that OLS estimators can become inconsistent under sparsity and characterize the threshold at which this occurs, finding that regression on eigenvector centrality is less robust to sparsity than on degree and diffusion. Second, we derive the asymptotic distributions of the OLS estimators…

结合 T-learning 与 DR-learning：因果对比的 oracle 有效估计框架AI 解读

We introduce efficient plug-in (EP) learning, a novel framework for the estimation of heterogeneous causal contrasts, such as the conditional average treatment effect and conditional relative risk. The EP-learning framework enjoys the same oracle efficiency as Neyman-orthogonal learning strategies, such as DR-learning and R-learning, while addressing some of their primary drawbacks: (i) their practical applicability can be hindered by non-convex loss functions; and (ii) they…

缺失数据下纵向随机试验终点胜出概率的秩方法AI 解读

The primary analysis for longitudinal randomized controlled trials (RCTs) often compares treatment groups at the last timepoint, referred to as the landmark time. Assuming data are normally distributed and missing at random, the mixed model for repeated measures (MMRM) is widely used to conduct inference in terms of a mean difference. When outcomes violate normality assumption and/or the mean difference lacks a clear interpretation, we may quantify treatment effects using…