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In this paper, we are concerned with how to select significant variables in semiparametric modeling. Variable selection for semiparametric regression models consists of two components: model selection for nonparametric components and…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2008-12-18 Runze Li , Hua Liang

In a causal graphical model, an instrument for a variable X and its effect Y is a random variable that is a cause of X and independent of all the causes of Y except X. (Pearl (1995), Spirtes et al (2000)). Instrumental variables can be used…

Methodology · Statistics 2013-01-14 Tianjiao Chu , Richard Scheines , Peter L. Spirtes

We are in the middle of a remarkable rise in the use and capability of artificial intelligence. Much of this growth has been fueled by the success of deep learning architectures: models that map from observables to outputs via multiple…

Applications · Statistics 2017-01-02 Jason Hartford , Greg Lewis , Kevin Leyton-Brown , Matt Taddy

Finding valid instruments is difficult. We propose Validity Set Instrumental Variable (VSIV) estimation, a method for estimating local average treatment effects (LATEs) in heterogeneous causal effect models when the instruments are…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-02-11 Zhenting Sun , Kaspar Wüthrich

Variable selection comprises an important step in many modern statistical inference procedures. In the regression setting, when estimators cannot shrink irrelevant signals to zero, covariates without relationships to the response often…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2025-03-28 Ka Long Keith Ho , Hien Duy Nguyen

Instrumental variable (IV) strategies are widely used in political science to establish causal relationships. However, the identifying assumptions required by an IV design are demanding, and it remains challenging for researchers to assess…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-11-08 Apoorva Lal , Mac Lockhart , Yiqing Xu , Ziwen Zu

We consider a nonparametric regression model with continuous endogenous independent variables when only discrete instruments are available that are independent of the error term. Although this framework is very relevant for applied…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-10-18 Samuele Centorrino , Frédérique Fève , Jean-Pierre Florens

In biometrics and related fields, the Cox proportional hazards model are widely used to analyze with covariate adjustment. However, when some covariates are not observed, an unbiased estimator usually cannot be obtained. Even if there are…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-06-06 Shunichiro Orihara

We address the problem of causal effect estimation in the presence of hidden confounders using nonparametric instrumental variable (IV) regression. An established approach is to use estimators based on learned spectral features, that is,…

In this paper, we study nonparametric estimation of instrumental variable (IV) regressions. Recently, many flexible machine learning methods have been developed for instrumental variable estimation. However, these methods have at least one…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-13 Andrew Bennett , Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao , Whitney Newey , Vasilis Syrgkanis , Masatoshi Uehara

This paper presents a simple method for carrying out inference in a wide variety of possibly nonlinear IV models under weak assumptions. The method is non-asymptotic in the sense that it provides a finite sample bound on the difference…

Econometrics · Economics 2018-09-12 Joel L. Horowitz

Empirical instrumental variables (IV) studies often report separate results based on low-dimensional instruments and many base instruments. This paper proposes a combination test that integrates these commonly reported statistics. The test…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-03-25 Liyu Dou , Pengjin Min , Wenjie Wang , Yichong Zhang

One of the fundamental challenges in causal inference is to estimate the causal effect of a treatment on its outcome of interest from observational data. However, causal effect estimation often suffers from the impacts of confounding bias…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-23 Debo Cheng , Ziqi Xu , Jiuyong Li , Lin Liu , Thuc Duy Le , Jixue Liu

Instrumental variables (IV) are often used to identify causal effects in observational settings and experiments subject to non-compliance. Under canonical assumptions, IVs allow us to identify a so-called local average treatment effect…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-09-03 Luca Locher , Mats J. Stensrud , Aaron L. Sarvet

Imitation learning from demonstrations usually suffers from the confounding effects of unmeasured variables (i.e., unmeasured confounders) on the states and actions. If ignoring them, a biased estimation of the policy would be entailed. To…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-24 Yan Zeng , Shenglan Nie , Feng Xie , Libo Huang , Peng Wu , Zhi Geng

In statistics and machine learning, approximation of an intractable integration is often achieved by using the unbiased Monte Carlo estimator, but the variances of the estimation are generally high in many applications. Control variates…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-10-16 Ruosi Wan , Mingjun Zhong , Haoyi Xiong , Zhanxing Zhu

We offer straightforward theoretical results that justify incorporating machine learning in the standard linear instrumental variable setting. The key idea is to use machine learning, combined with sample-splitting, to predict the treatment…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-06-22 Jiafeng Chen , Daniel L. Chen , Greg Lewis

Instrumental variable (IV) methods mitigate bias from unobserved confounding in observational causal inference but rely on the availability of a valid instrument, which can often be difficult or infeasible to identify in practice. In this…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-04-08 Frances Dean , Jenna Fields , Radhika Bhalerao , Marie Charpignon , Ahmed Alaa

Causal effect estimation relies on separating the variation in the outcome into parts due to the treatment and due to the confounders. To achieve this separation, practitioners often use external sources of randomness that only influence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-03 Aahlad Manas Puli , Rajesh Ranganath

Variable selection for optimal treatment regime in a clinical trial or an observational study is getting more attention. Most existing variable selection techniques focused on selecting variables that are important for prediction, therefore…

Methodology · Statistics 2014-05-22 Ailin Fan , Wenbin Lu , Rui Song