每日简报

通过矩阵补全改进异质性处理效应估计的理论保证AI 解读

A central goal of modern causal inference is estimating heterogeneous treatment effects to answer questions like "how does an intervention affect each unit," rather than only on average. We study this problem with panel-data where we observe $n$ units across $m$ times under unknown, non-uniform treatment assignments. The data in this setting is naturally represented as a matrix of all unit--time treatment effects. Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects can then be…

使用 R 包 mets 分析生存与竞争风险数据的限制平均损失时间AI 解读

This paper introduces software implemented in the mets R-package for calculating non-parametric and regression estimates of Restricted Mean Survival Time (RMST) and Restricted Mean Time Lost (RMTL), including RMTL due to specific causes. A unique feature is the ability to compute the non-parametric estimates of RMST and RMTL, as well as their standard errors, for all time horizons simultaneously. Regression modeling in mets is based on Inverse Probability of Censoring…

离线强化学习与逆强化学习讲义（二）：逆强化学习与动态离散选择基础AI 解读

In the forward reinforcement-learning problem, the reward is fixed and known; the learner is asked to find a good policy or value function. Here we turn the question around. Given offline data generated by an expert, can we recover the reward the expert was optimizing? This is the inverse reinforcement learning problem, and remarkably, two communities, structural econometricians studying dynamic discrete choice (DDC) and machine learners studying entropy-regularized IRL,…

生存结局下随机治疗干预的去偏推断AI 解读

Estimating the causal effect of a time-dependent treatment on time to death is challenging. In this paper, we formulate the problem using the illness-death model and focus on a stochastic intervention that modifies the hazard governing the transition from no treatment to treatment initiation. Such an intervention can only be implemented at the level of the observed data, whereas the causally valid intervention is defined at the level of the true data-generating process. We…

通过协变量转移建模高效估计随机实验中的纵向治疗效应AI 解读

We present a regression-adjustment framework designed for the estimation of longitudinal treatment effects in randomized experiments under static regimes. While regression-adjustment methods are useful for variance reduction in randomized experiments by using pre-treatment covariates, they usually focus only on average effects, from which we cannot obtain valuable insights into when the effects appear and how long they continue. To address this issue, we consider…

利用最优传输对高维潜在结果与混杂因素进行部分识别AI 解读

Partial identification provides informative causal guarantees when point identification is impossible, but existing approaches based on optimal transport (OT) become computationally and statistically intractable in high-dimensional settings. This limitation is particularly severe when both potential outcomes and confounders are high-dimensional, where classical OT-based bounds suffer from the curse of dimensionality and unfavorable convergence rates. To address this…

机器学习辅助协变量调整的设计型边层面因果推断AI 解读

We study design-based causal inference for edge-level outcomes in directed networks under dyadic interference. In this setting, outcomes are defined on directed edges and depend on the joint treatment assignments of pairs of units, inducing a complex dependence structure that invalidates standard estimation and inference procedures developed for node-level data. We construct Horvitz--Thompson estimators for a general class of edge-level causal effects and establish their…

英国 NHS 急性医院的数字成熟度与技术效率：英格兰横截面证据AI 解读

Whether investment in digital health technology is associated with differences in hospital productivity is a question of substantial policy relevance, yet interpretation is constrained by challenges in causal identification and prior evidence is mixed. Technical efficiency in NHS acute hospital trusts in England is estimated using Bayesian stochastic frontier analysis. A four-input Cobb--Douglas production function incorporating clinical full-time equivalents, administrative…

超越均值的结构性因果效应与拓扑可忽略性AI 解读

Many interventions alter the structure of an outcome distribution rather than its mean: they can split a population into disconnected regimes, create loops or holes, generate branches, or reorganize an outcome cloud while leaving the average response nearly unchanged. In such settings, mean-based causal estimands such as the average treatment effect may miss important structural effects. We introduce topological-geometrical causal metrics based on summaries of interventional…

加成率估计的证伪自适应集合AI 解读

In this paper we provide a constructive way for researchers to salvage the classic De Loecker and Warzynski (2012) markup recovery procedure when falsified. To do this, we consider continuous relaxations of the standard assumptions behind markup estimation. By computing the values of the markup as a function of the relaxations across the set of non-falsified models, we obtain an identified set for the markup which generalizes the standard baseline markup estimand to account…

处理启动时间增量因果效应的有效推断AI 解读

We consider continuous time to treatment initiation. This can commonly occur in preventive medicine, such as disease screening and vaccination; it can also occur with non-fatal health conditions such as HIV infection without the onset of AIDS. While traditional causal inference focused on `when to treat' and its effects, we consider the incremental causal effect when the intensity of time to treatment initiation is intervened upon. We derive the efficient influence function…

序贯决策中因果效应的置信区间AI 解读

We derive confidence intervals and confidence sequences for causal effects in situations where the back-door criterion is applicable. Our tightest confidence intervals hold in the standard setting where the training data consists of IID observations over a system described by a given causal diagram. When interventions are allowed to depend on the past data, our confidence intervals become wider and involve a term coming from the law of the iterated logarithm, even where the…

扩散引导平滑的几何自适应反事实分布学习AI 解读

We study counterfactual distribution learning for high-dimensional outcomes whose laws may concentrate near lower-dimensional structure. Standard isotropic smoothing ignores this geometry, leading to unfavorable scaling and unstable local inference. We propose semiparametrically debiased, diffusion-guided estimators for smoothed counterfactual densities and their scores. These estimators combine causal nuisance adjustment with geometry-adaptive localization driven by a…

因果密度函数AI 解读

We study the full density ratio between a specified intervention regime $P_a$ and an observational regime $P_0$, $ρ_a=dP_a/dP_0$, under the prerequisite $P_a\ll P_0$. We call the regime-indexed ratio a causal density function when $P_a$ is an identified or directly observed interventional law. The underlying Radon-Nikodym derivative and the identity $ \mathbb{E}_{a}[f(Z)] = \mathbb{E}_{0}\!\left[f(Z)ρ_a(Z)\right] $ are classical importance weighting, not new identification…

修正线性单元回归AI 解读

This paper develops a regression framework for analyzing integrated conditional distribution and quantile functions. The proposed method, termed rectified linear unit (ReLU) regression, projects the ReLU-transformed outcome onto covariates and admits a closed-form estimator. Its population regression function is the best linear approximation to the integrated conditional distribution function of the outcome, and the corresponding convex conjugate, obtained via the…

We develop inference for complete dyadic samples with spatial dependence governed by geographic distances between nodes, covering settings beyond the scope of existing dyadic inference theory. We propose spatial variance and corrected block jackknife estimators consistent in nondegenerate and degenerate Gaussian cases. Under degeneracy, spatial subsampling consistently estimates possibly non-Gaussian limits. Combining the jackknife with subsampling yields the max…

因果机器学习：综述与开放问题AI 解读

Causal Machine Learning (CausalML) is an umbrella term for machine learning methods that formalize the data-generation process as a structural causal model (SCM). This perspective enables us to reason about the effects of changes to this process (interventions) and what would have happened in hindsight (counterfactuals). We categorize work in CausalML into five groups according to the problems they address: (1) causal supervised learning, (2) causal generative modeling, (3)…

从联合数据中学习可解释因子随机策略的极小极大方法及不确定性量化AI 解读

We study offline policy optimization over exponentially large factorial action spaces from randomized preference data, showing how conjoint experiments can estimate interpretable stochastic policies with asymptotically valid uncertainty under regularity conditions. Conjoint analyses typically report Average Marginal Component Effects (AMCEs) by averaging over opponent attributes and thus ignore strategic interdependence. We instead learn stochastic interventions --…

基于双重差分的因果持续时间分析AI 解读

In economic program evaluation, it is common to obtain panel data in which outcomes are indicators that an individual has reached an absorbing state. For example, they may indicate whether an individual has exited a period of unemployment, passed an exam, left a marriage, or had their parole revoked. The parallel trends assumption that underpins difference-in-differences generally fails in such settings. We suggest identifying conditions similar to those of…

协变量分布偏移下外部有效性的简明稳健性度量AI 解读

This paper studies the robustness of estimated policy effects to changes in the distribution of covariates, a key determinant of the external validity of (quasi)-experimental results. I propose a novel robustness metric $δ^*$ which measures the smallest covariate shift needed to invalidate an empirical claim about the policy effect (e.g., $ATE > 0$). I estimate $δ^*$ via de-biased GMM, achieving a parametric rate of convergence while accommodating machine-learning estimators…

基于最近邻的逻辑套索回归与梯度降维AI 解读

This paper investigates a new approach to estimate the gradient of the conditional probability given the covariates in the binary classification framework. The proposed approach consists of fitting a localized nearest-neighbor logistic model with $\ell_1$-penalty in order to cope with possibly high-dimensional covariates. Our theoretical analysis shows that the pointwise convergence rate of the gradient estimator is optimal under very mild assumptions. Moreover, using an…

序贯无混杂条件下的动态边际政策效应估计AI 解读

We develop methods for estimating how infinitesimal policy changes affect long-term outcomes in dynamic systems. We show that dynamic marginal policy effects (MPEs) can be identified via tractable reduced-form expressions, and can be estimated under a general sequential unconfoundedness assumption. We also propose a doubly robust estimator for dynamic MPEs. Our approach does not require observing full dynamic state information (as is typically assumed for off-policy…

学习相关奖励模型：统计障碍与机会AI 解读

Random Utility Models (RUMs) are a classical framework for modeling user preferences and play a key role in reward modeling for Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). However, a crucial shortcoming of many of these techniques is the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) assumption, which collapses \emph{all} human preferences to a universal underlying utility function, yielding a coarse approximation of the range of human preferences. On the other hand,…

对异质性稳健的颗粒工具变量AI 解读

Granular instrumental variables (GIV) has experienced sharp growth in empirical macro-finance. The methodology's rise showcases granularity's potential for identification across many economic environments, like the estimation of spillovers and demand systems. I propose a new estimator--called robust granular instrumental variables (RGIV)--that enables studying unit-level heterogeneity in spillovers. Unlike existing methods that assume heterogeneity is a function of…