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Recovering causal structure in the presence of latent variables is an important but challenging task. While many methods have been proposed to handle it, most of them require strict and/or untestable assumptions on the causal structure. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-28 Wei Chen , Linjun Peng , Zhiyi Huang , Haoyue Dai , Zhifeng Hao , Ruichu Cai , Kun Zhang

We propose a method for inferring the existence of a latent common cause ('confounder') of two observed random variables. The method assumes that the two effects of the confounder are (possibly nonlinear) functions of the confounder plus…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2012-05-14 Dominik Janzing , Jonas Peters , Joris Mooij , Bernhard Schoelkopf

When inferring the causal effect of one variable on another from correlational data, a common practice by professional researchers as well as lay decision makers is to control for some set of exogenous confounding variables. Choosing an…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2023-05-31 Ran Spiegler

The instrumental variable (IV) approach is a widely used way to estimate the causal effects of a treatment on an outcome of interest from observational data with latent confounders. A standard IV is expected to be related to the treatment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-30 Debo Cheng , Ziqi Xu , Jiuyong Li , Lin Liu , Jixue Liu , Thuc Duy Le

We consider the problem of learning causal models from observational data generated by linear non-Gaussian acyclic causal models with latent variables. Without considering the effect of latent variables, one usually infers wrong causal…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-08-13 Saber Salehkaleybar , AmirEmad Ghassami , Negar Kiyavash , Kun Zhang

Ordinal variables, such as on the Likert scale, are common in applied research. Yet, existing methods for causal inference tend to target nominal or continuous data. When applied to ordinal data, this fails to account for the inherent…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-02-26 Martina Scauda , Jack Kuipers , Giusi Moffa

We address the problem of inferring the causal effect of an exposure on an outcome across space, using observational data. The data is possibly subject to unmeasured confounding variables which, in a standard approach, must be adjusted for…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-06-04 Muhammad Osama , Dave Zachariah , Thomas B. Schön

Observational studies can play a useful role in assessing the comparative effectiveness of competing treatments. In a clinical trial the randomization of participants to treatment and control groups generally results in well-balanced groups…

We consider the problem of causal effect estimation with an unobserved confounder, where we observe a single proxy variable that is associated with the confounder. Although it has been shown that the recovery of an average causal effect is…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-19 Liyuan Xu , Arthur Gretton

We consider learning a causal ordering of variables in a linear non-Gaussian acyclic model called LiNGAM. Several existing methods have been shown to consistently estimate a causal ordering assuming that all the model assumptions are…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2013-07-30 Tatsuya Tashiro , Shohei Shimizu , Aapo Hyvarinen , Takashi Washio

In causal inference, interference occurs when the treatment of one unit may affect the outcomes of other units. The goal of this work is to serve as a guide to the use of linear outcome modeling for estimating causal effects in settings…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-01 Eric Tong , Salvador V. Balkus

Causal inference has received great attention across different fields from economics, statistics, education, medicine, to machine learning. Within this area, inferring causal effects at individual level in observational studies has become…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-02-16 Thai Pham

Unmeasured confounding can severely bias causal effect estimates from spatiotemporal observational data, especially when the confounders do not vary smoothly in time and space. In this work, we develop a method for addressing unmeasured…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-29 Jiaxi Wu , Alexander Franks

Detecting latent confounders from proxy variables is an essential problem in causal effect estimation. Previous approaches are limited to low-dimensional proxies, sorted proxies, and binary treatments. We remove these assumptions and…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-03-22 Nathan Mankovich , Homer Durand , Emiliano Diaz , Gherardo Varando , Gustau Camps-Valls

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

We consider inferring the causal effect of a treatment (intervention) on an outcome of interest in situations where there is potentially an unobserved confounder influencing both the treatment and the outcome. This is achievable by assuming…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-01-15 Ruolin Meng , Ming-Yu Chung , Dhanajit Brahma , Ricardo Henao , Lawrence Carin

Relationship between two popular modeling frameworks of causal inference from observational data, namely, causal graphical model and potential outcome causal model is discussed. How some popular causal effect estimators found in…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-11-03 Priyantha Wijayatunga

A predictive model makes outcome predictions based on some given features, i.e., it estimates the conditional probability of the outcome given a feature vector. In general, a predictive model cannot estimate the causal effect of a feature…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-04-11 Jiuyong Li , Lin Liu , Ziqi Xu , Ha Xuan Tran , Thuc Duy Le , Jixue Liu

Valid causal inference in observational studies often requires controlling for confounders. However, in practice measurements of confounders may be noisy, and can lead to biased estimates of causal effects. We show that we can reduce the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-06-05 Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao , Madeleine Udell

Causal inference from observational data provides strong evidence for the best action in decision-making without performing expensive randomized trials. The effect of an action is usually not identifiable under unobserved confounding, even…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Md Musfiqur Rahman , Ziwei Jiang , Hilaf Hasson , Murat Kocaoglu