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Causal inference from observational datasets often relies on measuring and adjusting for covariates. In practice, measurements of the covariates can often be noisy and/or biased, or only measurements of their proxies may be available.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-23 Wenshuo Guo , Mingzhang Yin , Yixin Wang , Michael I. Jordan

This paper addresses the problem of measurement errors in causal inference and highlights several algebraic and graphical methods for eliminating systematic bias induced by such errors. In particulars, the paper discusses the control of…

Methodology · Statistics 2012-03-19 Judea Pearl

Due to concerns about parametric model misspecification, there is interest in using machine learning to adjust for confounding when evaluating the causal effect of an exposure on an outcome. Unfortunately, exposure effect estimators that…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-01-08 Oliver Dukes , Stijn Vansteelandt , David Whitney

Representational similarity analysis (RSA) is a multivariate technique to investigate cortical representations of objects or constructs. While avoiding ill-posed matrix inversions that plague multivariate approaches in the presence of many…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-12-03 Roberto Viviani

Sensitivity analysis is important to assess the impact of unmeasured confounding in causal inference from observational studies. The marginal sensitivity model (MSM) provides a useful approach in quantifying the influence of unmeasured…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-04-14 Yi Zhang , Wenfu Xu , Zhiqiang Tan

Offline evaluation of language models from usage logs is biased when model choice is confounded: the same user-side factors that influence which model is used can also influence how its output is judged, so raw comparisons of logged scores…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-05 Jikai Jin , Vasilis Syrgkanis

In observational studies of treatment effects, estimates may be biased by unmeasured confounders, which can potentially affect the validity of the results. Understanding sensitivity to such biases helps assess how unmeasured confounding…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-02 Qishuo Yin , Dylan S. Small

This paper studies the properties of linear regression on centrality measures when network data is sparse and observed with error. We make three contributions in this setting. First, we show that OLS estimators can become inconsistent under…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-03-18 Yong Cai

Instrumental variable methods are widely used for inferring the causal effect in the presence of unmeasured confounders. Existing instrumental variable methods for nonlinear outcome models require stringent identifiability conditions. This…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-07-01 Sai Li , Zijian Guo

We consider the estimation of average treatment effects in observational studies and propose a new framework of robust causal inference with unobserved confounders. Our approach is based on distributionally robust optimization and proceeds…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-06 Dimitris Bertsimas , Kosuke Imai , Michael Lingzhi Li

This paper introduces the $f$-sensitivity model, a new sensitivity model that characterizes the violation of unconfoundedness in causal inference. It assumes the selection bias due to unmeasured confounding is bounded "on average"; compared…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-07 Ying Jin , Zhimei Ren , Zhengyuan Zhou

Matching is one of the most widely used study designs for adjusting for measured confounders in observational studies. However, unmeasured confounding may exist and cannot be removed by matching. Therefore, a sensitivity analysis is…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-01-17 Jeffrey Zhang , Dylan Small , Siyu Heng

One obstacle to ``elevating" correlation to causation is the phenomenon of confounding, i.e., when a correlation between two variables exists because both variables are in fact caused by a third variable. The situation where the confounders…

Applications · Statistics 2025-06-24 Caren Marzban , Yikun Zhang , Nicholas Bond , Michael Richman

Sensitivity to unmeasured confounding is not typically a primary consideration in designing treated-control comparisons in observational studies. We introduce a framework allowing researchers to optimize robustness to omitted variable bias…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-19 Melody Huang , Dan Soriano , Samuel D. Pimentel

In many observational studies, researchers are often interested in studying the effects of multiple exposures on a single outcome. Standard approaches for high-dimensional data such as the lasso assume the associations between the exposures…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-11-06 Dingke Tang , Dehan Kong , Linbo Wang

While observational data are routinely used to estimate causal effects of biomedical treatments, doing so requires special methods to adjust for observed confounding. These methods invariably rely on untestable statistical and causal…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-02 Arman Oganisian

In causal inference with ordinal outcomes, several interpretable estimands are functions of the probability that the potential outcome under one treatment is larger than that under another treatment for the same unit. This probability…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-13 Peiyu He , Fan Li

To estimate direct and indirect effects of an exposure on an outcome from observed data strong assumptions about unconfoundedness are required. Since these assumptions cannot be tested using the observed data, a mediation analysis should…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-03-29 Anita Lindmark , Xavier de Luna , Marie Eriksson

Inferring causal effects of continuous-valued treatments from observational data is a crucial task promising to better inform policy- and decision-makers. A critical assumption needed to identify these effects is that all confounding…

We propose a novel sensitivity analysis framework for linear estimators with identification failures that can be viewed as seeing the wrong outcome distribution. Our approach measures the degree of identification failure through the change…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-04-30 Jacob Dorn , Luther Yap