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Instrumental variables are a popular tool to infer causal effects under unobserved confounding, but choosing suitable instruments is challenging in practice. We propose gIVBMA, a Bayesian model averaging procedure that addresses this…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-02 Gregor Steiner , Mark Steel

We show that causal effects can be identified when there is bunching in the distribution of a continuous treatment variable, without imposing any parametric assumptions. This yields a new nonparametric method for overcoming selection bias…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-07-08 Carolina Caetano , Gregorio Caetano , Leonard Goff , Eric Nielsen

Unlike other techniques of causality inference, the use of valid instrumental variables can deal with unobserved sources of both variable errors, variable omissions, and sampling bias, and still arrive at consistent estimates of average…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-02-17 Øyvind Hoveid

We provide a new flexible framework for inference with the instrumental variable model. Rather than using linear specifications, functions characterizing the effects of instruments and other explanatory variables are estimated using machine…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-02-03 Robert E. McCulloch , Rodney A. Sparapani , Brent R. Logan , Purushottam W. Laud

In the standard difference-in-differences research design, the parallel trends assumption may be violated when the relationship between the exposure trend and the outcome trend is confounded by unmeasured confounders. Progress can be made…

This paper investigates the finite sample performance of a range of parametric, semi-parametric, and non-parametric instrumental variable estimators when controlling for a fixed set of covariates to evaluate the local average treatment…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-12-15 Hugo Bodory , Martin Huber , Michael Lechner

Causal inference is the process of using assumptions, study designs, and estimation strategies to draw conclusions about the causal relationships between variables based on data. This allows researchers to better understand the underlying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Anpeng Wu , Kun Kuang , Ruoxuan Xiong , Fei Wu

For observational studies, we study the sensitivity of causal inference when treatment assignments may depend on unobserved confounders. We develop a loss minimization approach for estimating bounds on the conditional average treatment…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-03-11 Steve Yadlowsky , Hongseok Namkoong , Sanjay Basu , John Duchi , Lu Tian

Instrument variable (IV) methods are widely used in empirical research to identify causal effects of a policy. In the local average treatment effect (LATE) framework, the IV estimand identifies the LATE under three main assumptions: random…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-03-21 Désiré Kédagni , Huan Wu , Yi Cui

Estimating causal effects has become an integral part of most applied fields. In this work we consider the violation of the classical no-interference assumption with units connected by a network. For tractability, we consider a known…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-03-05 Alexandre Belloni , Fei Fang , Alexander Volfovsky

Multidimensional heterogeneity and endogeneity are important features of a wide class of econometric models. With control variables to correct for endogeneity, nonparametric identification of treatment effects requires strong support…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-01-28 Whitney K. Newey , Sami Stouli

In a general set-up that allows unmeasured confounding, we show that the conditional average treatment effect on the treated can be identified as one of two possible values. Unlike existing causal inference methods, we do not require an…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-12-29 Zikun Qin , Bikram Karmakar

Unmeasured confounding presents a significant challenge in causal inference from observational studies. Classical approaches often rely on collecting proxy variables, such as instrumental variables. However, in applications where the…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-01-16 Xiaochuan Shi , Dehan Kong , Linbo Wang

We propose an instrumental variable framework for identifying and estimating causal effects of discrete and continuous treatments with binary instruments. The basis of our approach is a local copula representation of the joint distribution…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-12-17 Victor Chernozhukov , Iván Fernández-Val , Sukjin Han , Kaspar Wüthrich

Mendelian randomization (MR) is a popular method in genetic epidemiology to estimate the effect of an exposure on an outcome by using genetic instruments. These instruments are often selected from a combination of prior knowledge from…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-11-12 Nan Bi , Hyunseung Kang , Jonathan Taylor

This paper combines causal mediation analysis with double machine learning to control for observed confounders in a data-driven way under a selection-on-observables assumption in a high-dimensional setting. We consider the average indirect…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-02-17 Helmut Farbmacher , Martin Huber , Lukáš Lafférs , Henrika Langen , Martin Spindler

Traditional instrumental variable (IV) estimators face a fundamental constraint: they can only accommodate as many endogenous treatment variables as available instruments. This limitation becomes particularly challenging in settings where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Shiangyi Lin , Hui Lan , Vasilis Syrgkanis

This paper studies the challenging problem of estimating causal effects from observational data, in the presence of unobserved confounders. The two-stage least square (TSLS) method and its variants with a standard instrumental variable (IV)…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-04 Debo Cheng , Ziqi Xu , Jiuyong Li , Lin Liu , Jixue Liu , Thuc Duy Le

Many causal and structural effects depend on regressions. Examples include policy effects, average derivatives, regression decompositions, average treatment effects, causal mediation, and parameters of economic structural models. The…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2022-10-25 Victor Chernozhukov , Whitney K Newey , Rahul Singh

Identifying covariates that modify treatment effects is a central problem in causal inference. Yet existing data-adaptive procedures do not provide finite-sample control over the expected number of false discoveries, risking spurious…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-12 Falco J. Bargagli-Stoffi , Omar Melikechi