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Related papers: Causal Bounds and Instruments

200 papers

To estimate causal effects, analysts performing observational studies in health settings utilize several strategies to mitigate bias due to confounding by indication. There are two broad classes of approaches for these purposes: use of…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-05-01 Roy S. Zawadzki , Joshua D. Grill , Daniel L. Gillen

In observational studies, potential unobserved confounding is a major barrier in isolating the average causal effect (ACE). In these scenarios, two main approaches are often used: confounder adjustment for causality (CAC) and instrumental…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-11-26 Roy S. Zawadzki , Daniel L. Gillen

One of the most fundamental problems in causal inference is the estimation of a causal effect when variables are confounded. This is difficult in an observational study, because one has no direct evidence that all confounders have been…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2014-11-03 Ricardo Silva , Robin Evans

Inferring the effect of interventions within complex systems is a fundamental problem of statistics. A widely studied approach employs structural causal models that postulate noisy functional relations among a set of interacting variables.…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-02-14 David Strieder , Mathias Drton

One of the fundamental challenges found throughout the data sciences is to explain why things happen in specific ways, or through which mechanisms a certain variable $X$ exerts influences over another variable $Y$. In statistics and machine…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-06-09 Drago Plecko , Elias Bareinboim

This paper considers inference of causal structure in a class of graphical models called "conditional DAGs". These are directed acyclic graph (DAG) models with two kinds of variables, primary and secondary. The secondary variables are used…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-11-12 Chris J. Oates , Jim Q. Smith , Sach Mukherjee

Instrumental variables (IVs) are widely used for estimating causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding. Under the standard IV model, however, the average treatment effect (ATE) is only partially identifiable. To address this,…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-01-08 Linbo Wang , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

The discovery of discriminatory bias in human or automated decision making is a task of increasing importance and difficulty, exacerbated by the pervasive use of machine learning and data mining. Currently, discrimination discovery largely…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2019-11-05 Bilal Qureshi , Faisal Kamiran , Asim Karim , Salvatore Ruggieri , Dino Pedreschi

We study the problem of estimating causal effects under hidden confounding in the following unpaired data setting: we observe some covariates $X$ and an outcome $Y$ under different experimental conditions (environments) but do not observe…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-22 Felix Schur , Niklas Pfister , Peng Ding , Sach Mukherjee , Jonas Peters

The estimation of causal effects using quasiexperiments often relies on the use of unusual or serendipitous sources of exogenous variation. When the goal is estimating the same causal effects across many different settings, the same unusual…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-05-26 Nick Huntington-Klein

We consider the problem of estimating a causal effect in a multi-domain setting. The causal effect of interest is confounded by an unobserved confounder and can change between the different domains. We assume that we have access to a proxy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-30 Manuel Iglesias-Alonso , Felix Schur , Julius von Kügelgen , Jonas Peters

Causal inference often hinges on strong assumptions - such as no unmeasured confounding or perfect compliance - that are rarely satisfied in practice. Partial identification offers a principled alternative: instead of relying on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-08-20 Tobias Maringgele

If $X,Y,Z$ denote sets of random variables, two different data sources may contain samples from $P_{X,Y}$ and $P_{Y,Z}$, respectively. We argue that causal discovery can help inferring properties of the `unobserved joint distributions'…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-05-12 Dominik Janzing , Philipp M. Faller , Leena Chennuru Vankadara

Causal inference is known to be very challenging when only observational data are available. Randomized experiments are often costly and impractical and in instrumental variable regression the number of instruments has to exceed the number…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-06-19 Dominik Rothenhäusler , Peter Bühlmann , Nicolai Meinshausen

Causal inference is difficult in the presence of unobserved confounders. We introduce the instrumented common confounding (ICC) approach to (nonparametrically) identify causal effects with instruments, which are exogenous only conditional…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-09-20 Christian Tien

Instrumental variables regression is a tool that is commonly used in the analysis of observational data. The instrumental variables are used to make causal inference about the effect of a certain exposure in the presence of unmeasured…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-07 Valentin Vancak , Arvid Sjölander

To draw scientifically meaningful conclusions and build reliable models of quantitative phenomena, cause and effect must be taken into consideration (either implicitly or explicitly). This is particularly challenging when the measurements…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-12-11 Max A. Little , Reham Badawy

In longitudinal studies where units are embedded in space or a social network, interference may arise, meaning that a unit's outcome can depend on treatment histories of others. The presence of interference poses significant challenges for…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-26 Ye Wang , Michael Jetsupphasuk

Time-to-event analyses are often plagued by both -- possibly unmeasured -- confounding and competing risks. To deal with the former, the use of instrumental variables for effect estimation is rapidly gaining ground. We show how to make use…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-01-04 Torben Martinussen , Stijn Vansteelandt

Causal inference, estimating causal effects from observational data, is a fundamental tool in many disciplines. Of particular importance across a variety of domains is the continuous treatment setting, where the variable of intervention has…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-15 Christopher Stith , Medha Barath , Vahid Balazadeh , Jesse C. Cresswell , Rahul G. Krishnan