每日简报

用于因果推断的生成式合成数据：陷阱、补救与机会AI 解读

Synthetic tabular data are often evaluated by distributional similarity, privacy distance, or train-on-synthetic-test-on-real predictive performance, but these criteria do not ensure validity for causal inference. We show that fully generative tabular synthesizers, including GAN- and LLM-based models, can preserve predictive utility while distorting average treatment effect (ATE) estimates. The failure is structural: ATE preservation requires both a realistic covariate law…

近分离二元数据中惩罚GEE的有限样本方差估计AI 解读

Penalized generalized estimating equations (PGEE) stabilize point estimation for longitudinal binary data under near-separation, but inference still depends on how the sandwich variance is corrected. Existing corrections for PGEE can overadjust in high-leverage directions, require restrictive pooling assumptions, or add global regularization without explaining the bias. We establish first-order asymptotics for PGEE along convergent interior-root sequences and derive a matrix…

社会网络形成的因果推断AI 解读

This paper develops a framework for identification, estimation, and inference on the causal mechanisms driving endogenous social network formation. Identification is challenging because of unobserved confounders and reverse causality; inference is complicated by questions of equilibrium and sampling. We leverage repeated observations of a network over time and random variation in initial ties to address challenges to causal identification. Our design-based approach sidesteps…

因子增强面板回归与方差加权处理效应AI 解读

We revisit panel regressions with unobserved heterogeneity through the lens of variance-weighted average treatment effects. Building on established results for cross-sectional OLS and one-way fixed effects panels, we show that two-way panel estimators with latent factors, specifically the principal components estimator of Greenaway-McGrevy, Han and Sul (2012) and the interactive fixed effects estimator of Bai (2009), also converge to interpretable estimands under fully…

显然存在因果关系的场景：万智牌轮抽中关联数据的因果使用AI 解读

Observational data are often used to answer causal questions, yet the legitimacy of doing so is often argued to hinge on strong, domain supported assumptions about underlying causal structure with limited guidance on how much domain knowledge support should exist to justify including a causal edge of interest in a directed acyclic graph. We introduce the criterion of embarrassingly causal scenarios, where the existence of an exposure outcome relationship is so…

时变处理效应阶梯楔形设计应采用哪种小样本修正？AI 解读

Stepped-wedge cluster randomized trials (SW-CRTs) evaluate interventions rolled out across clusters over time. Standard analyses typically use immediate-treatment (IT) models, which assume effects begin at crossover and remain constant thereafter. When effects vary with exposure duration, IT models may misrepresent target effects. Exposure-time indicator (ETI) models address this by allowing treatment effects to differ by time since exposure and by targeting the…

从职员到智能体人工智能：技术将如何改变金融业劳动力市场？AI 解读

Financial firms have gone through three major technological waves: computerization in the 1980s and 1990s, the rise of indexing and passive investing in the 2000s and 2010s, and the AI and automation wave from roughly 2015 to the present. This project studies how much labor is required to manage capital across those waves by tracking a simple productivity measure: assets under management per employee. Using a small panel of representative firms, we compare changes in AUM per…

随机前沿模型因果分析的近期进展AI 解读

Causal inference methods (instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, etc.) are primary tools used across many social science milieus. One area where their application has lagged however, is in the study of productivity and efficiency. A main reason for this is that the nature of the stochastic frontier model does not immediately lend itself to a causal framework when interest hinges on an error component of the model. This paper reviews the…

通过均值或效应尺度可迁移性构造外部对照组AI 解读

Learning about causal effects in target populations and their subsets may be facilitated by combining information from multiple sources. One major class of study designs that combine information involves appending an index study with data from an external comparator, which may facilitate head-to-head comparisons of treatments initially studied in different populations. We delineate external comparator analyses under two distinct, but related, identification strategies. The…

函数值参数假设检验的一般非参数框架AI 解读

We present a general nonparametric approach for testing whether a statistical parameter defined through conditional distributions is constant across the conditioning variables. Such hypotheses arise naturally in problems such as assessing treatment effect heterogeneity, conditional associational effects, and conditional mean dependence. Our framework studies function-valued parameters obtained by evaluating a smooth statistical functional on conditional probability…

网络时间序列中的顶点错位与变点定位AI 解读

Inference for time series of networks often relies on accurate vertex correspondence between network realizations at different times. In practice, however, such vertex alignments can be misspecified or unknown. We study the impact of vertex alignment on changepoint localization for dynamic networks through two illustrative models, each with a similar changepoint, with the key distinction being whether changepoint information is contained in marginal or joint distributions of…

利用粗粒度外部信息估计随机试验的细分亚组处理效应AI 解读

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are often underpowered to detect treatment heterogeneity in subgroups defined by cross-classifications of multiple covariates, due to sparse sample sizes in some strata. External RCT data can help, but typically provide treatment effect estimates at a coarser level (e.g., by sex or race) rather than for the finer subgroups of interest (e.g., race-by-sex). We propose a novel James-Stein (JS)-type estimator that borrows strength from such…

量化替代终点韧性的函数类元分析框架AI 解读

A surrogate marker is a biomarker or other physical measurement used to replace a primary outcome in clinical trials to evaluate a treatment effect when the primary outcome of interest is costly, invasive, or takes a long time to observe. However, replacing a primary outcome with a surrogate can lead to the "surrogate paradox," in which a treatment appears beneficial based on the surrogate but is actually harmful with respect to the primary outcome. In this paper, we propose…

时变收入分布的灵活贝叶斯模型AI 解读

Survey data are widely used to study how income inequality, poverty, and welfare evolve over time. A common practice is to estimate the income distribution separately for each year, treating annual observations as independent cross-sections. For population subgroups with relatively small sample sizes, however, this approach can produce unstable parameter estimates, imprecise inference for inequality and poverty measures, and potentially misleading posterior probabilities of…

通过秩黏性非参数点识别处理效应分布AI 解读

Treatment effect distributions are not identified without restrictions on the joint distribution of potential outcomes. Existing approaches either impose rank preservation -- a strong assumption -- or derive partial identification bounds that are often wide. We show that a single scalar parameter, rank stickiness, suffices for nonparametric point identification while permitting rank violations. The identified joint distribution -- the coupling that maximizes average rank…

利用尾部不对称性发现多元极端事件的因果结构AI 解读

Causal discovery in multivariate extremes is challenging because extreme observations are sparse, dependent, and often affected by latent common shocks. Existing approaches focus on undirected extremal dependence, require prior graph restriction, and do not scale beyond small systems. We introduce tail-induced asymmetry as a principle for causal directionality in heavy-tailed systems, where extreme events propagate asymmetrically so that forward tail prediction is…

与估计量匹配的逆概率处理加权前瞻性样本量设计AI 解读

In observational studies, accurately characterizing variance is critical for sample size determination, yet unaccounted-for variability from propensity score estimation and the resulting weights limit the accuracy of standard variance approximations for design. Existing approaches often rely on heuristics or randomized controlled trial (RCT) formulas that treat weights as fixed, potentially misaligning prospective design with the causal estimator used at analysis. We propose…

从 Riesz 表示元视角理解目标学习AI 解读

As research in causal inference has sought to address more complex scientific questions, the number of specialized estimands in the field has proliferated. Recognition that many of these estimands share a common linear form has generated interest in simplifying estimation procedures using Riesz representers. In this work, we construct a targeted minimum loss-based estimation procedure for nested linear functionals, leveraging Riesz representers of a general recursive form.…

用于干预抽样与边推断的因果编码扩散模型AI 解读

Standard diffusion models are flexible estimators of complex distributions, but they do not encode causal structures and therefore do not by themselves support causal analysis. We propose a causality-encoded diffusion framework that incorporates a known directed acyclic graph by training conditional diffusion models consistent with the graph factorisation. The resulting sampler approximately recovers the observational distribution and enables interventional sampling by…

纵向数据的层级概率主成分分析AI 解读

In many longitudinal studies, a large number of variables are measured repeatedly over time, with substantial missing data. Existing methods, such as probabilistic principal component analysis (PPCA), are ill-equipped to handle such incomplete, high-dimensional longitudinal data, as they fail to account for the nested sources of variation and temporal dependency inherent in repeated measures. We introduce hierarchical probabilistic principal component analysis (HPPCA), a…

干扰下的因果识别：处理分配独立性的作用AI 解读

Empirical researchers routinely invoke the no-interference or \textit{individualistic treatment response} (ITR) assumption to identify causal effects in observational studies, despite concerns that interference across units may arise in many economic settings. This paper studies the causal content of standard ITR-based identification formulas when arbitrary interference is present. We show that, under restrictions on dependence between treatment assignments across units,…

实际正值性违背下平均处理效应 TMLE 的目标化策略与截断研究AI 解读

Estimating average treatment effects from observational data is challenging under practical violations of the positivity assumption. Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimators (TMLEs) are widely used because of their double robustness and efficiency, but they can remain sensitive to such violations. We conduct extensive simulation studies to examine how targeting strategies and truncation levels affect TMLE performance under varying degrees of outcome regression misspecification…

移动健康纵向与复发事件联合模型中的时变处理效应估计AI 解读

Not only does mobile health technology enable researchers to track changes in multiple longitudinal outcomes of interest and to record the occurrence of health-related events over time, but it also allows for the delivery of repeated low-cost treatments directly to individuals in real time. We present a model-based approach for estimating the effect of repeatedly delivered treatments in a micro-randomized trial (MRT) via an extension of a joint longitudinal-survival model.…

用贝叶斯非参数方法建模区域协变量与收入分布关系的空间异质性AI 解读

Understanding the how the distribution of an economic outcome, such as income, changes with respect to space and covariates is a key concern for policy makers. To address this, we develop a Bayesian nonparametric model, the Normalised Latent Measure Factor Model with Covariates (NLMFM-C), which expresses a large collection of related densities as mixtures of latent factor densities and allows for spatial and covariate effects. We propose an adaptive Gibbs sampler to…