Related papers: A paradox from randomization-based causal inferenc…
Causal inference is best understood using potential outcomes. This use is particularly important in more complex settings, that is, observational studies or randomized experiments with complications such as noncompliance. The topic of this…
We develop a design-based framework for causal inference that accommodates random potential outcomes without introducing outcome models, thereby extending the classical Neyman--Rubin paradigm in which outcomes are treated as fixed. By…
Identifying causal effects is a key problem of interest across many disciplines. The two long-standing approaches to estimate causal effects are observational and experimental (randomized) studies. Observational studies can suffer from…
The well-known Simpson's Paradox, or Yule-Simpson Effect, in statistics is often illustrated by the following thought experiment: A drug may be found in a trial to increase the survival rate for both men and women, but decrease the rate for…
Randomized experiments have long been the gold standard for scientists seeking to learn about cause and effect. When randomized experiments are infeasible, scientists often resort to observational studies, which are widely available and…
An important issue raised by Efron in the context of large-scale multiple comparisons is that in many applications the usual assumption that the null distribution is known is incorrect, and seemingly negligible differences in the null may…
We consider a causal effect that is confounded by an unobserved variable, but with observed proxy variables of the confounder. We show that, with at least two independent proxy variables satisfying a certain rank condition, the causal…
Randomized experiments are increasingly employed in two-sided markets, such as buyer--seller platforms, to evaluate the effects of marketplace interventions. These experiments must reflect the underlying two-sided market structure in their…
Randomized Controlled Trials are one of the pillars of science; nevertheless, they rely on hand-crafted hypotheses and expensive analysis. Such constraints prevent causal effect estimation at scale, potentially anchoring on popular yet…
Quantum three box paradox is a prototypical example of some bizarre predictions for intermediate measurements made on pre- and post-selected systems. Although in principle those effects can be explained by measurement disturbance, it is not…
Group-formation experiments, in which experimental units are randomly assigned to groups, are a powerful tool for studying peer effects in the social sciences. Existing design and analysis approaches allow researchers to draw inference from…
In randomized experiments, treatment and control groups should be roughly the same--balanced--in their distributions of pretreatment variables. But how nearly so? Can descriptive comparisons meaningfully be paired with significance tests?…
In several large-scale replication projects, statistically non-significant results in both the original and the replication study have been interpreted as a "replication success". Here we discuss the logical problems with this approach:…
The study of causality or causal inference - how much a given treatment causally affects a given outcome in a population - goes way beyond correlation or association analysis of variables, and is critical in making sound data driven…
The case that the factor model does not account for all the covariances of the observed variables is considered. This is a quite realistic condition because some model error as well as some sampling error should usually occur with empirical…
A different general philosophy, to be called Full Randomness (FR), for the analysis of random effects models is presented, involving a notion of reducing or preferably eliminating fixed effects, at least formally. For example, under FR…
The notion of causal effect is fundamental across many scientific disciplines. Traditionally, quantitative researchers have studied causal effects at the level of variables; for example, how a certain drug dose (W) causally affects a…
Difference-in-differences (DiD) is a cornerstone of causal inference, yet extending it to functional outcomes is not a routine scalar generalization; rather, it entails three fundamental challenges in identification, inference, and…
How should researchers analyze randomized experiments in which the main outcome is latent and measured in multiple ways but each measure contains some degree of error? We first identify a critical study-specific noncomparability problem in…
Instrumental variables have been widely used to estimate the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome. Existing confidence intervals for causal effects based on instrumental variables assume that all of the putative instrumental variables…