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Related papers: Causal Bounds and Instruments

200 papers

Causal inference from observational data is crucial for many disciplines such as medicine and economics. However, sharp bounds for causal effects under relaxations of the unconfoundedness assumption (causal sensitivity analysis) are subject…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Dennis Frauen , Valentyn Melnychuk , Stefan Feuerriegel

Instrumental variable models allow us to identify a causal function between covariates $X$ and a response $Y$, even in the presence of unobserved confounding. Most of the existing estimators assume that the error term in the response $Y$…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-09-23 Sorawit Saengkyongam , Leonard Henckel , Niklas Pfister , Jonas Peters

This study introduces a data-driven, machine learning-based method to detect suitable control variables and instruments for assessing the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome in observational data. Our approach tests the joint…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-05-20 Nicolas Apfel , Julia Hatamyar , Martin Huber , Jannis Kueck

When an exposure of interest is confounded by unmeasured factors, an instrumental variable (IV) can be used to identify and estimate certain causal contrasts. Identification of the marginal average treatment effect (ATE) from IVs relies on…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-10-02 Alexander W. Levis , Matteo Bonvini , Zhenghao Zeng , Luke Keele , Edward H. Kennedy

Inferring causal relationships from observational data is often challenging due to endogeneity. This paper provides new identification results for causal effects of discrete, ordered and continuous treatments using multiple binary…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-10-21 Nadja van 't Hoff

Certain causal models involving unmeasured variables induce no independence constraints among the observed variables but imply, nevertheless, inequality contraints on the observed distribution. This paper derives a general formula for such…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-02-21 Judea Pearl

Assessing causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding is challenging. Although auxiliary variables, such as instrumental variables, are commonly used to identify causal effects, they are often unavailable in practice due to…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-31 Kang Shuai , Shanshan Luo , Yue Zhang , Feng Xie , Yangbo He

I argue that regularizing terms in standard regression methods not only help against overfitting finite data, but sometimes also yield better causal models in the infinite sample regime. I first consider a multi-dimensional variable…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-07-01 Dominik Janzing

Instrumental variables are commonly used to estimate effects of a treatment afflicted by unmeasured confounding, and in practice instruments are often continuous (e.g., measures of distance, or treatment preference). However, available…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-07-05 Edward H. Kennedy , Scott A. Lorch , Dylan S. Small

Predicting the effect of unseen interventions is a fundamental research question across the data sciences. It is well established that in general such questions cannot be answered definitively from observational data. This realization has…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-27 Alexis Bellot

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…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-04-22 Samuele Centorrino , Christopher F. Parmeter

Instrumental variables are widely used in econometrics and epidemiology for identifying and estimating causal effects when an exposure of interest is confounded by unmeasured factors. Despite this popularity, the assumptions invoked to…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-02-15 Alexander W. Levis , Edward H. Kennedy , Luke Keele

Causal inference is a science with multi-disciplinary evolution and applications. On the one hand, it measures effects of treatments in observational data based on experimental designs and rigorous statistical inference to draw causal…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-05 Jingying Zeng , Run Wang

In experimental and observational data settings, researchers often have limited knowledge of the reasons for missing outcomes. To address this uncertainty, we propose bounds on causal effects for missing outcomes, accommodating the scenario…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-19 Max Rubinstein , Denis Agniel , Larry Han , Marcela Horvitz-Lennon , Sharon-Lise Normand

Instrumental variables allow the estimation of cause and effect relations even in presence of unobserved latent factors, thus providing a powerful tool for any science wherein causal inference plays an important role. More recently, the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-09-20 Davide Poderini , Rafael Chaves , Iris Agresti , Gonzalo Carvacho , Fabio Sciarrino

In social science researches, causal inference regarding peer effects often faces significant challenges due to homophily bias and contextual confounding. For example, unmeasured health conditions (e.g., influenza) and psychological states…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-04-29 Shanshan Luo , Kang Shuai , Yechi Zhang , Wei Li , Yangbo He

The causal effect of an intervention (treatment/exposure) on an outcome can be estimated by: i) specifying knowledge about the data-generating process; ii) assessing under what assumptions a target quantity, such as for example a causal…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-03-05 Michael Schomaker

Causal inference is the process of using assumptions, study designs, and estimation strategies to draw conclusions about the causal relationships between variables based on data. This allows researchers to better understand the underlying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Anpeng Wu , Kun Kuang , Ruoxuan Xiong , Fei Wu

We investigate the estimation of the causal effect of a treatment variable on an outcome in the presence of a latent confounder. We first show that the causal effect is identifiable under certain conditions when data is available from…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-06-16 Yaroslav Kivva , Sina Akbari , Saber Salehkaleybar , Negar Kiyavash

Many proposals for the identification of causal effects require an instrumental variable that satisfies strong, untestable unconfoundedness and exclusion restriction assumptions. In this paper, we show how one can potentially identify…