Related papers: Robust inference on population indirect causal eff…
Causal inference seeks to estimate the effect of an intervention on an outcome using observed data, typically via Rubin's potential-outcome framework or Pearl's do-calculus. Following section 9 of Richardson and Robins (2013), this essay…
We propose semi- and non-parametric methods to estimate conditional interventional effects in the setting of two discrete mediators whose causal ordering is unknown. Average interventional indirect effects have been shown to decompose an…
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…
In this paper we review the notion of direct causal effect as introduced by Pearl (2001). We show how it can be formulated without counterfactuals, using intervention indicators instead. This allows to consider the natural direct effect as…
This paper proposes a new class of distributional causal quantities, referred to as the \textit{outcome conditioned partial policy effects} (OCPPEs), to measure the \textit{average} effect of a general counterfactual intervention of a…
In many empirical settings, directly observing a treatment variable may be infeasible although an error-prone surrogate measurement of the latter will often be available. Causal inference based solely on the surrogate measurement is…
We study the interactive effects (IE) model as an extension of the conventional additive effects (AE) model. For the AE model, the fixed effects estimator can be obtained by applying least squares to a regression that adds a linear…
Clinical decisions to treat and diagnose patients are affected by implicit biases formed by racism, ableism, sexism, and other stereotypes. These biases reflect broader systemic discrimination in healthcare and risk marginalizing already…
A common concern when trying to draw causal inferences from observational data is that the measured covariates are insufficiently rich to account for all sources of confounding. In practice, many of the covariates may only be proxies of the…
Estimating the causal effect of a treatment on the entire response distribution is an important yet challenging task. For instance, one might be interested in how a pension plan affects not only the average savings among all individuals but…
In panel experiments, we randomly assign units to different interventions, measuring their outcomes, and repeating the procedure in several periods. Using the potential outcomes framework, we define finite population dynamic causal effects…
An essential and challenging problem in causal inference is causal effect estimation from observational data. The problem becomes more difficult with the presence of unobserved confounding variables. The front-door adjustment is a practical…
We study estimation and inference for heterogeneous principal causal effects with binary treatments and binary intermediate variables. Principal causal effects are subgroup effects within strata defined by potential values of an…
With reference to a binary outcome and a binary mediator, we derive identification bounds for natural effects under a reduced set of assumptions. Specifically, no assumptions about confounding are made that involve the outcome; we only…
Difference-in-differences (DiD) is the most popular observational causal inference method in health policy, employed to evaluate the real-world impact of policies and programs. To estimate treatment effects, DiD relies on the "parallel…
We consider missingness in the context of causal inference when the outcome of interest may be missing. If the outcome directly affects its own missingness status, i.e., it is "self-censoring", this may lead to severely biased causal effect…
Recent methods to improve generalizations from nonrandom samples typically invoke assumptions such as the strong ignorability of sample selection that are often controversial in practice to derive point estimates. Rather than focus on the…
The policy relevant treatment effect (PRTE) measures the average effect of switching from a status-quo policy to a counterfactual policy. Estimation of the PRTE involves estimation of multiple preliminary parameters, including propensity…
Suppose it is of interest to characterize effect heterogeneity of an intervention across levels of a baseline covariate using only pre- and post- intervention outcome measurements from those who received the intervention, i.e. with no…
Propensity score methods have been shown to be powerful in obtaining efficient estimators of average treatment effect (ATE) from observational data, especially under the existence of confounding factors. When estimating, deciding which type…