每日简报

逆向混杂分析：精确量化混杂影响AI 解读

The presence of unmeasured confounding factors during the collection of observational data may lead to biased estimates of the effect of an exposure on an outcome. Consequently, a central problem in causal inference based on observational data is sensitivity analysis with respect to unmeasured confounding. Existing sensitivity analyses generally focus on worst-case bounds. We propose an exact method for quantifying the significance of confounding, defined here in terms of…

使用预训练嵌入处理非结构化数据的计量经济学AI 解读

Unstructured data, such as images and text, are increasingly used in empirical economics. Since training machine-learning models on unstructured data is costly, economists often use off-the-shelf pre-trained deep learning models developed by computer scientists to extract embeddings, which are then used as covariates in target economic analyses. Despite the popularity of this practice, its theoretical foundations remain limited. There are two main difficulties. First,…

置信时域：有限监测期限内的渐近随时有效推断AI 解读

Anytime-valid inference enables analysts to continuously monitor their data and stop experiments early. However, the majority of these methods incur a certain conservativeness by remaining valid on infinite time horizons. In practice, a bound on the horizon may be imposed due to budgetary, practical, or ethical constraints. In this paper, we ask the question: "Is it possible to obtain sharper large-sample anytime-valid inference by forgoing validity beyond some finite time…

利用最佳顺序得分搜索学习时间序列因果结构AI 解读

Causal structure learning from observational data is central to many scientific and policy domains, but the time series setting common to many disciplines poses several challenges due to temporal dependence. In this paper we focus on score-based causal discovery for multivariate time series and introduce TS-BOSS, a time series extension of the recently proposed Best Order Score Search (BOSS) (Andrews et al. 2023). TS-BOSS performs a permutation-based search over dynamic…

战略网络形成模型中的单网络有限样本推断AI 解读

We develop a finite-sample valid inference procedure for strategic network formation models with endogenous network statistics, using only a single observed network. We impose no restrictions on network density, equilibrium selection, or the dependence structure induced by strategic interaction. Using a "bounding-by-c" technique, we obtain realization-wise sandwich inequalities whose middle term depends only on exogenous covariates and i.i.d. pairwise shocks. These…

不依赖平行趋势的面板数据处理效应估计AI 解读

This paper proposes a novel approach for estimating treatment effects in panel data settings, addressing key limitations of the standard difference-in-differences (DID) approach. The standard approach relies on the parallel trends assumption, implicitly requiring that unobservable factors correlated with treatment assignment be unidimensional, time-invariant, and affect untreated potential outcomes in an additively separable manner. This paper introduces a more flexible…

潜在秩不变性下的分布处理效应AI 解读

Treatment effect heterogeneity is of great concern in policy evaluation. However, existing analyses have mostly been limited to summary measures such as an average treatment effect, due to the fundamental limitation that we cannot simultaneously observe both potential outcomes for a given unit. In this paper, I identify and estimate moment-identified distributional treatment effect (DTE) parameters, such as the marginal distribution of treatment effect. The key identifying…

内生网络下的半参数动态 Logit 模型AI 解读

Many choices persist over time and are made among friends. Teenagers who smoke tend to keep smoking, and they tend to have friends who smoke. Part of this persistence is habit, but part may come from characteristics researchers do not observe, such as a taste for risk, that shape both whether a student smokes and whom they befriend. Methods that treat friendships as given cannot separate the two when the characteristic changes over time. This paper shows how the friendship…

条件分位数限制识别参数的一致推断AI 解读

Many structural and dynamic economic models imply that key parameters are identified by conditional quantile restrictions. Building on the exponential-weighting approach of Bierens (1990) and recent advances in penalized maximum statistics for conditional moment restrictions (Chen et al., 2025), we develop a unified inference framework for such parameters. We propose an adaptive $\ell_1$-penalized supremum statistic that transforms the conditional restriction into a…

BLP 模型中的条件矩估计与推断AI 解读

The random-coefficient demand model of Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes (1995) is commonly estimated by the generalized method of moments (GMM), using an unconditional moment restriction with a fixed set of instruments. Identification of the model, however, rests on a conditional moment restriction. The two are not equivalent: the unconditional restriction may admit additional parameter values. We construct a counterexample in which the model is identified by the conditional…

切片 Lp 分布平衡方法AI 解读

A popular class of causal inference methods addresses confounding through weighting, which reweights treated and control groups to balance their covariate distributions without using outcome information, thereby preserving a design-based perspective. In this paper, we propose sliced $L^p$ distributional balancing (SLDB), a family indexed by $p\in[1,\infty)$ that measures imbalance by averaging squared $L^p$ distances between the cumulative distribution functions of…

线性模型中的最优检验及其因果推断含义AI 解读

Despite its widespread use in practice, multiple regression suffers from two important limitations due to ignoring the structure between predictors. First, reported coefficients are, in fact, direct effects in a causal context. These are often less meaningful than total effects when accounting for a factor's contribution, however, estimating the latter typically requires a causal diagram to be specified among predictors. The second limitation is multicollinearity, which…

福利风险：政策评价的分布稳健界AI 解读

This paper develops a framework to study how the welfare effects of policy interventions are distributed across individuals when those effects are not directly observed. We bound the superquantile of individual welfare changes by the superquantile of conditional average welfare changes, which is typically identified, revealing how gains and losses are spread across the population. We also bound the share of the population whose welfare loss from the policy exceeds any given…

SelectionBias：计算因果目标量选择偏差界的 R 包AI 解读

Selection bias may arise when there are dropouts or missing data in the analysis, or when subjects are included or excluded in the analysis based upon some selection criteria for the study population. Selection bias can jeopardize the validity of the study and a sensitivity analysis for assessing the effect of the selection is desired. Recently, there has been a surge of results for selection bias in causal inference, with several suggestions for sensitivity analyses. One…

弱代理变量下近端因果学习的同时推断AI 解读

Proximal causal learning uses the treatment-inducing proxy and the outcome-inducing proxy through the outcome bridge and the treatment bridge to provide a way to address unobserved confounding in observational studies. This paper studies simultaneous inference for the marginal counterfactual distribution and quantile treatment effect under weak proxies. First, we propose a measure of weak-proxy strength and tightens the population-bias bound for the counterfactual CDF…

方向性分布偏移下的实验地点选择AI 解读

Multi-site studies are widely used across the social sciences, education, and medicine to learn the effects of interventions across heterogeneous populations. But deployment populations, on which a given intervention is implemented, may differ systematically from the experimental population on which the intervention is evaluated. I propose a method for selecting sites with minimax guarantees against directional distribution shifts, which allows the researcher to guard…

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…

逐步放量即可：网络干扰下 A/B 测试回归估计量的去偏AI 解读

Network interference complicates A/B testing on online platforms, such as social networks and marketplaces, where causal methods based on single experiments often suffer from significant bias due to complex interference patterns. This paper demonstrates the statistical benefits of merging data from multiple experiments with varying treatment proportions. Sequential experimentation with increasing traffic, or ramp-up, is widely used in tech companies for risk management and…

整群随机试验中依从效应与网络因果效应的识别和有效估计AI 解读

Treatment noncompliance is pervasive in infectious disease cluster-randomized trials. Although all individuals within a cluster are assigned the same treatment condition, the treatment uptake status may vary across individuals due to noncompliance. We propose a semiparametric framework to evaluate the individual compliance effect and network assignment effect within principal stratum exhibiting different patterns of noncompliance. The individual compliance effect captures…

死亡导致退出时的纵向处理效应：二维目标量与生活质量案例AI 解读

When longitudinal outcomes are evaluated in mortal populations, their non-existence after death complicates the analysis and its causal interpretation. Where popular methods often merge longitudinal outcome and survival into one scale or otherwise try to circumvent the problem of mortality, some highly relevant questions require survival to be acknowledged as a unique condition. "\textit{What are my chances of survival}" and "\textit{What can I expect for my condition while…