每日简报

PRCD-MAP：在因果发现中学习对不完美先验的信任程度AI 解读

External priors of unknown reliability create a brittle trade-off in causal discovery: blind trust amplifies errors, blind rejection wastes signal. Real priors are also heterogeneously reliable -- physical laws are trustworthy, LLM-suggested edges are speculative -- yet existing methods either ignore priors or impose them through globally uniform trust. We propose PRCD-MAP, a soft prior-consumption layer that assigns per-edge trust to an imperfect prior and uses it to…

Causal inference in continuous-time sequential decision problems is challenged by hidden confounding and partially observed states. We show that, under explicit structural assumptions, observability of the latent state enables identification of dynamic treatment effects through a continuous-time conditional front-door adjustment, even in the presence of hidden confounding. We derive a general adjustment formula and show that it reduces to a tractable state-space formula when…

无须结构方程的非参数工具变量分析：无精确解逆问题的泛函去偏推断AI 解读

We consider debiased inference on finite-dimensional functionals of infinite-dimensional least-squares solutions to inverse problems as a way to avoid having to assume exact solutions exist. Such assumptions are substantive and not innocuous, and their failure may imperil inference when we impose them on the statistical model. Our approach instead allows us to conduct inference on a quantity that is defined regardless of solutions existing and coincides with the usual…

个体异质系数 τ 分位数的估计与推断AI 解读

This paper proposes estimation and inference procedures for quantiles of the heterogeneous individual-specific coefficients in panel data. Unlike conventional panel quantile regression, which focuses on outcome heterogeneity, our approach targets the $τ$-quantile of the cross-sectional distribution of individual-specific slopes. We establish the asymptotic theory under both stochastic and deterministic designs, with convergence rates $\sqrt{N}$ and $\sqrt{N\sqrt{T}}$,…

利用网络结构的工具变量回归：因果节点发现与估计AI 解读

Estimating causal effects from high-dimensional, structured exposures is a fundamental challenge in modern applications ranging from neuroscience and finance to environmental science. While the literature has addressed high-dimensional instrumental variable (IV) regression, and separately leveraged graph structure in penalized regression, the integration of both, especially for causal support recovery in the presence of latent confounding, remains unexplored. In this work,…

随机前沿模型与失效边界分析AI 解读

This paper studies sensitivity analysis in stochastic frontier models by developing relaxations of the baseline assumptions imposed on the latent inefficiency and noise components, and characterize bounds for a benchmark technical-efficiency object under such relaxations. We then derive the associated breakdown frontier for conclusions about conditional technical efficiency and illustrate the procedure using a well-known dataset. We show the estimation and inference of the…

剩余生存时间分位数的贝叶斯非参数因果推断：阿尔茨海默病应用AI 解读

In Alzheimer's disease research, a clinically important question is how much longer individuals would remain dementia-free beyond a given time under different baseline amyloid statuses. We address this question using observational data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) treating baseline amyloid status as the exposure. Estimation is challenging because amyloid status is confounded, time to dementia onset is heterogeneous and heavily right censored,…

被死亡截断的纵向结局：因果估计目标与贝叶斯估计AI 解读

In randomized controlled trials with longitudinal outcomes, death before the end of follow-up poses a fundamental challenge: after death, the outcome is no longer a real-valued measurement. This complicates the definition and interpretation of causal estimands, particularly when treatment may affect both survival and longitudinal outcomes. We review existing estimands for longitudinal outcomes truncated by death and clarify the assumptions required for their identification…

含不可观测异质性的动态离散选择模型序贯估计AI 解读

Unobserved heterogeneity is empirically central in dynamic discrete choice models but computationally costly to incorporate: estimation requires repeatedly solving fixed-point equations for every latent type. We develop EM-NPL($q$), a unified framework combining the sequential pseudo-likelihood (NPL) and finite-mixture Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithms, truncating the inner solver to $q$ iterations, and accommodating the Bellman, policy valuation, Euler, and Efficient…

目标试验模拟中有效统计推断的样本分割方法AI 解读

\noindent Target trial emulation has improved comparative effectiveness research by making the causal question, assumptions, and analysis plan explicit. However, target trial protocols are usually developed iteratively. That is, after examining the data, investigators revise the protocol to reflect which target trials the observational data can realistically support. This iterative procedure is part of normal scientific practice, but it raises concerns about selective…

多结局因果图的可视分析AI 解读

We introduce a visual analysis method for multiple causal graphs with different outcome variables, namely, multi-outcome causal graphs. Multi-outcome causal graphs are important in healthcare for understanding multimorbidity and comorbidity. To support the visual analysis, we collaborated with medical experts to devise two comparative visualization techniques at different stages of the analysis process. First, a progressive visualization method is proposed for comparing…

逻辑回归中变量选择与模型平均方法的比较AI 解读

Model uncertainty is a central challenge in statistical models for binary outcomes such as logistic regression, arising when it is unclear which predictors should be included in the model. Many methods have been proposed to address this issue for logistic regression, but their relative performance under realistic conditions remains poorly understood. We therefore conducted a preregistered, simulation-based comparison of 28 established methods for variable selection and…

双重差分模型中的处理变量误分类AI 解读

The difference-in-differences (DID) design is one of the most popular methods used in empirical economics research. However, there is almost no work examining what the DID method identifies in the presence of a misclassified treatment variable. This paper studies the identification of treatment effects in DID designs when the treatment is misclassified. Misclassification arises in various ways, including when the timing of a policy intervention is ambiguous or when…

GEEPERs：利用主分层评分与堆叠估计方程进行主分层分析AI 解读

Principal stratification is a framework for making sense of causal effects conditioned on variables that may themselves have been affected by the treatment. For instance, in an evaluation of an educational intervention, some subjects in the treatment group may not fully utilize the intervention, and researchers may be interested in how this subgroup is affected. Most principal stratification estimators rely on strong structural or modeling assumptions and often require…

集合值控制函数AI 解读

The control function approach allows the researcher to identify various causal effects of interest. While powerful, it requires a strong invertibility assumption in the selection process, which limits its applicability. This paper expands the scope of the nonparametric control function approach by allowing the control function to be set-valued and derive sharp bounds on structural parameters. The proposed generalization accommodates a wide range of selection processes…

仅用成交价格对多竞标者拍卖进行推断AI 解读

This paper studies inference in first-price and second-price sealed-bid auctions with many bidders, using an asymptotic framework where the number of bidders increases while the number of auctions remains fixed. Our approach enables asymptotically exact inference on key features, such as the winner's expected utility, the seller's expected revenue, and the tail of the valuation distribution, using only transaction price data. Our simulations demonstrate the accuracy of the…

单侧不依从聚类随机试验中的潜在依从性贝叶斯建模AI 解读

In pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trials (PCRCTs), healthcare providers are randomized while both providers and patients may deviate from the assigned intervention. In many PCRCTs, cluster-level implementation is measured using multiple continuous metrics, while individual compliance is recorded as a binary indicator. Standard complier average causal effect (CACE) estimands focus on individual-level compliance and do not account for heterogeneity in implementation…

总体异质性下双样本孟德尔随机化的稳健框架AI 解读

Mendelian randomization is a powerful tool for causal inference in observational studies. The two-sample summary-data design, which estimates genetic associations with exposures and outcomes in separate cohorts, is the most widely used Mendelian randomization approach in large-scale genomic studies. However, this approach relies on a strong assumption of population homogeneity across the two samples. In practice, available samples often differ in ancestry, demographics,…

分布稳健的治疗效应预测AI 解读

Using only retrospective data, we study the problem of predicting treatment effects for the same treatment/policy implemented in a different location or time period. We propose a distributionally robust estimator that minimizes the worst-case mean squared error for the prediction of treatment effect over a class of distributions defined by a Wasserstein neighborhood around the source distribution. Because the joint distribution of potential outcomes is unidentified, the…

模糊断点回归的一类广义有限矩估计量AI 解读

The standard fuzzy regression discontinuity (FRD) estimator is a ratio of differences of local polynomial estimators. I show that this estimator does not possess any finite integer moments, regardless of local polynomial degree, kernel function, or bandwidth. The estimator is heavy-tailed in small samples or when the treatment probability discontinuity at the cutoff is small. I present a generalized class of FRD estimators which preserves all finite moments from the data,…

将专家知识纳入有向无环图混合的贝叶斯因果发现AI 解读

Bayesian causal discovery benefits from prior information elicited from domain experts, and in heterogeneous domains any prior knowledge would be badly needed. However, so far prior elicitation approaches have assumed a single causal graph and hence are not suited to heterogeneous domains. We propose a causal elicitation strategy for heterogeneous settings, based on Bayesian experimental design (BED) principles, and a variational mixture structure learning (VaMSL) method --…

多地点异质性处理效应推广的极小极大遗憾估计AI 解读

To test scientific theories and develop individualized treatment rules, researchers often wish to learn heterogeneous treatment effects that can be consistently found across diverse populations and contexts. We consider the problem of generalizing heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE) based on data from multiple sites. A key challenge is that a target population may differ from the source sites in unknown and unobservable ways. This means that the estimates from…

CausalCompass：模型错设情景下时间序列因果发现的稳健性评估AI 解读

Causal discovery from time series is a fundamental task in machine learning. However, its widespread adoption is hindered by a reliance on untestable causal assumptions and by the lack of robustness-oriented evaluation in existing benchmarks. To address these challenges, we propose CausalCompass, a flexible and extensible benchmark framework designed to assess the robustness of time-series causal discovery (TSCD) methods under violations of modeling assumptions. To…

动态面板 Logit 模型中马尔可夫反馈与不可观测异质性的充分统计量AI 解读

In this paper, we examine identification in dynamic panel logit models with state dependence, a first-order Markov feedback process, and individual unobserved heterogeneity by introducing sufficient statistics for the feedback process and the unobserved heterogeneity. If a sequentially exogenous discrete covariate follows a first-order Markov process, identification via conditional likelihood is infeasible regardless of the time period. We also establish the failure of point…