Related papers: Statistical Tests for Contagion in Observational S…
Homophily, the tendency of individuals who are alike to form ties with one another, is an important concept in the study of social networks. Yet accounting for homophily effects is complicated in the context of bipartite networks where ties…
We consider SIS contagion processes over networks where, a classical assumption is that individuals' decisions to adopt a contagion are based on their immediate neighbors. However, recent literature shows that some attributes are more…
In many real-world scenarios, it is nearly impossible to collect explicit social network data. In such cases, whole networks must be inferred from underlying observations. Here, we formulate the problem of inferring latent social networks…
Citation and coauthor networks offer an insight into the dynamics of scientific progress. We can also view them as representations of a causal structure, a logical process captured in a graph. From a causal perspective, we can ask questions…
Consider the causal effect that one individual's treatment may have on another individual's outcome when the outcome is contagious, with specific application to the effect of vaccination on an infectious disease outcome. The effect of one…
Homophily based on observables is widespread in networks. Therefore, homophily based on unobservables (fixed effects) is also likely to be an important determinant of the interaction outcomes. Failing to properly account for latent…
Many widely studied graphical models with latent variables lead to nontrivial constraints on the distribution of the observed variables. Inspired by the Bell inequalities in quantum mechanics, we refer to any linear inequality whose…
Researchers have focused on understanding how individual's behavior is influenced by the behaviors of their peers in observational studies of social networks. Identifying and estimating causal peer influence, however, is challenging due to…
It the literature have been identified three social mechanisms explaining the similarity between people connected in the network of social relations homophily, confounding and social contagion. The article proposes a simple model for…
Traditionally, statistical and causal inference on human subjects rely on the assumption that individuals are independently affected by treatments or exposures. However, recently there has been increasing interest in settings, such as…
Inbreeding homophily is a prevalent feature of human social networks with important individual and group-level social, economic, and health consequences. The literature has proposed an overwhelming number of dimensions along which human…
A fundamental limitation of causal inference in observational studies is that perceived evidence for an effect might instead be explained by factors not accounted for in the primary analysis. Methods for assessing the sensitivity of a…
When experimental subjects can interact with each other, the outcome of one individual may be affected by the treatment status of others. In many social science experiments, such spillover effects may occur through multiple networks, for…
Unveiling individuals' preferences for connecting with similar others (choice homophily) beyond the structural factors determining the pool of opportunities, is a challenging task. Here, we introduce a robust methodology for quantifying and…
The network data has attracted considerable attention in modern statistics. In research on complex network data, one key issue is finding its underlying connection structure given a network sample. The methods that have been proposed in…
Typically, contagion strength is modeled by a transmission rate $\lambda$, whereby all nodes in a network are treated uniformly in a mean-field approximation. However, local agents react differently to the same contagion based on their…
Convenient access to observational data enables us to learn causal effects without randomized experiments. This research direction draws increasing attention in research areas such as economics, healthcare, and education. For example, we…
Recent work has focused on nonparametric estimation of conditional treatment effects, but inference has remained relatively unexplored. We propose a class of nonparametric tests for both quantitative and qualitative treatment effect…
Randomized experiments on social networks pose statistical challenges, due to the possibility of interference between units. We propose new methods for estimating attributable treatment effects in such settings. The methods do not require…
It is commonly believed that information spreads between individuals like a pathogen, with each exposure by an informed friend potentially resulting in a naive individual becoming infected. However, empirical studies of social media suggest…