English

Cross-Treatment Effect Estimation for Multi-Category, Multi-Valued Causal Inference via Dynamic Neural Masking

Machine Learning 2025-11-04 v1 Machine Learning

Abstract

Counterfactual causal inference faces significant challenges when extended to multi-category, multi-valued treatments, where complex cross-effects between heterogeneous interventions are difficult to model. Existing methodologies remain constrained to binary or single-type treatments and suffer from restrictive assumptions, limited scalability, and inadequate evaluation frameworks for complex intervention scenarios. We present XTNet, a novel network architecture for multi-category, multi-valued treatment effect estimation. Our approach introduces a cross-effect estimation module with dynamic masking mechanisms to capture treatment interactions without restrictive structural assumptions. The architecture employs a decomposition strategy separating basic effects from cross-treatment interactions, enabling efficient modeling of combinatorial treatment spaces. We also propose MCMV-AUCC, a suitable evaluation metric that accounts for treatment costs and interaction effects. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world datasets demonstrate that XTNet consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in both ranking accuracy and effect estimation quality. The results of the real-world A/B test further confirm its effectiveness.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.01641,
  title  = {Cross-Treatment Effect Estimation for Multi-Category, Multi-Valued Causal Inference via Dynamic Neural Masking},
  author = {Xiaopeng Ke and Yihan Yu and Ruyue Zhang and Zhishuo Zhou and Fangzhou Shi and Chang Men and Zhengdan Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.01641},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:19:24.124Z