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Estimating treatment effects conditional on observed covariates can improve the ability to tailor treatments to particular individuals. Doing so effectively requires dealing with potential confounding, and also enough data to adequately…

A benefit of randomized experiments is that covariate distributions of treatment and control groups are balanced on average, resulting in simple unbiased estimators for treatment effects. However, it is possible that a particular…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-02-01 Zach Branson , Luke Miratrix

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are increasingly prevalent in education research, and are often regarded as a gold standard of causal inference. Two main virtues of randomized experiments are that they (1) do not suffer from…

Target trial emulation has improved comparative effectiveness research by making the causal question, assumptions, and analysis plan explicit. However, target trial protocols are usually developed iteratively. After examining the data,…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-30 Mats Julius Stensrud

In this review, we present econometric and statistical methods for analyzing randomized experiments. For basic experiments we stress randomization-based inference as opposed to sampling-based inference. In randomization-based inference,…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-10-26 Susan Athey , Guido Imbens

Analyses of randomised trials are often based on regression models which adjust for baseline covariates, in addition to randomised group. Based on such models, one can obtain estimates of the marginal mean outcome for the population under…

Methodology · Statistics 2017-07-17 Jonathan W. Bartlett

Randomized experiments can provide unbiased estimates of sample average treatment effects. However, estimates of population treatment effects can be biased when the experimental sample and the target population differ. In this case, the…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-11-10 Wenqi Shi , Xi Lin

For obtaining causal inferences that are objective, and therefore have the best chance of revealing scientific truths, carefully designed and executed randomized experiments are generally considered to be the gold standard. Observational…

Applications · Statistics 2008-11-12 Donald B. Rubin

Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects is an important problem across many domains. In order to accurately estimate such treatment effects, one typically relies on data from observational studies or randomized experiments. Currently,…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-02-28 Tobias Hatt , Jeroen Berrevoets , Alicia Curth , Stefan Feuerriegel , Mihaela van der Schaar

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) face inherent limitations, such as ethical or resource constraints, which lead to a limited number of study participants. To address these limitations, recent research endeavors have sought to incorporate…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-02-20 Peijin Wang , Hwanhee Hong , Kyungeun Jeon , Laine Elliott Thomas

We analyze the properties of matching estimators when there are few treated, but many control observations. We show that, under standard assumptions, the nearest neighbor matching estimator for the average treatment effect on the treated is…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-03-24 Bruno Ferman

Trial engagement effects are effects of trial participation on the outcome that are not mediated by treatment assignment. Most work on extending (generalizing or transporting) causal inferences from a randomized trial to a target population…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-23 Lawson Ung , Tyler J. VanderWeele , Issa J. Dahabreh

Understanding and characterizing treatment effect variation in randomized experiments has become essential for going beyond the "black box" of the average treatment effect. Nonetheless, traditional statistical approaches often ignore or…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2017-07-31 Peng Ding , Avi Feller , Luke Miratrix

We develop new methods to integrate experimental and observational data in causal inference. While randomized controlled trials offer strong internal validity, they are often costly and therefore limited in sample size. Observational data,…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-11-04 Xuelin Yang , Licong Lin , Susan Athey , Michael I. Jordan , Guido W. Imbens

There is increasing interest in combining information from experimental studies, including randomized and single-group trials, with information from external experimental or observational data sources. Such efforts are usually motivated by…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-23 Lawson Ung , Guanbo Wang , Sebastien Haneuse , Miguel A. Hernán , Issa J. Dahabreh

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are ideal for estimating causal effects, because the distributions of background covariates are similar in expectation across treatment groups. When estimating causal effects using observational data,…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-02-27 Anthony D. Scotina , Roee Gutman

Randomized trials are widely considered as the gold standard for evaluating the effects of decision policies. Trial data is, however, drawn from a population which may differ from the intended target population and this raises a problem of…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-10-30 Sofia Ek , Dave Zachariah

We consider methods for causal inference in randomized trials nested within cohorts of trial-eligible individuals, including those who are not randomized. We show how baseline covariate data from the entire cohort, and treatment and outcome…

Randomized trials typically estimate average relative treatment effects, but decisions on the benefit of a treatment are possibly better informed by more individualized predictions of the absolute treatment effect. In case of a binary…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-08-20 J Hoogland , J IntHout , M Belias , MM Rovers , RD Riley , FE Harrell , KGM Moons , TPA Debray , JB Reitsma

Randomized controlled trials are not only the golden standard in medicine and vaccine trials but have spread to many other disciplines like behavioral economics, making it an important interdisciplinary tool for scientists. When designing…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-11-30 Tassilo Schwarz