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Unobserved confounding is one of the main challenges when estimating causal effects. We propose a causal reduction method that, given a causal model, replaces an arbitrary number of possibly high-dimensional latent confounders with a single…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-02-24 Maximilian Ilse , Patrick Forré , Max Welling , Joris M. Mooij

Using observational data to estimate the effect of a treatment is a powerful tool for decision-making when randomized experiments are infeasible or costly. However, observational data often yields biased estimates of treatment effects,…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-03-01 Tobias Hatt , Stefan Feuerriegel

When constructing a model to estimate the causal effect of a treatment, it is necessary to control for other factors which may have confounding effects. Because the ignorability assumption is not testable, however, it is usually unclear…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-07 Spencer Woody , Carlos M. Carvalho , Jared S. Murray

A recent literature considers causal inference using noisy proxies for unobserved confounding factors. The proxies are divided into two sets that are independent conditional on the confounders. One set of proxies are `negative control…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-10-11 Ben Deaner

Inferring the causal effect of a non-randomly assigned exposure on an outcome requires adjusting for common causes of the exposure and outcome to avoid biased conclusions. Notwithstanding the efforts investigators routinely make to measure…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-02-04 Wen Wei Loh , Stijn Vansteelandt

Causal inference in observational studies can be challenging when confounders are subject to missingness. Generally, the identification of causal effects is not guaranteed even under restrictive parametric model assumptions when confounders…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-03-23 Jian Sun , Bo Fu

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…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-03 Marco Doretti , Elena Stanghellini

Causal inference from observational data provides strong evidence for the best action in decision-making without performing expensive randomized trials. The effect of an action is usually not identifiable under unobserved confounding, even…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Md Musfiqur Rahman , Ziwei Jiang , Hilaf Hasson , Murat Kocaoglu

Unmeasured confounding is a major challenge for identifying causal relationships from non-experimental data. Here, we propose a method that can accommodate unmeasured discrete confounding. Extending recent identifiability results in deep…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-08-13 Patrick Burauel , Frederick Eberhardt , Michel Besserve

We study the problem of learning conditional average treatment effects (CATE) from high-dimensional, observational data with unobserved confounders. Unobserved confounders introduce ignorance -- a level of unidentifiability -- about an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-02 Andrew Jesson , Sören Mindermann , Yarin Gal , Uri Shalit

Establishing cause-effect relationships from observational data often relies on untestable assumptions. It is crucial to know whether, and to what extent, the conclusions drawn from non-experimental studies are robust to potential…

The No Unmeasured Confounding Assumption is widely used to identify causal effects in observational studies. Recent work on proximal inference has provided alternative identification results that succeed even in the presence of unobserved…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-10-17 Benjamin Kompa , David R. Bellamy , Thomas Kolokotrones , James M. Robins , Andrew L. Beam

No unmeasured confounding is often assumed in estimating treatment effects in observational data when using approaches such as propensity scores and inverse probability weighting. However, in many such studies due to the limitation of the…

Applications · Statistics 2019-08-06 Rong Huang , Ronghui Xu , Parambir S. Dulai

Unmeasured confounding presents a common challenge in observational studies, potentially making standard causal parameters unidentifiable without additional assumptions. Given the increasing availability of diverse data sources, exploiting…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-18 Shanshan Luo , Yechi Zhang , Wei Li

In the era of fast-paced precision medicine, observational studies play a major role in properly evaluating new treatments in clinical practice. Yet, unobserved confounding can significantly compromise causal conclusions drawn from…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-20 Piersilvio De Bartolomeis , Javier Abad , Konstantin Donhauser , Fanny Yang

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

Proxy variables are commonly used in causal inference when unmeasured confounding exists. While most existing proximal methods assume a unidirectional causal relationship between two primary variables, many social and biological systems…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-21 Jiaqi Min , Xueyue Zhang , Shanshan Luo

It is important to draw causal inference from observational studies, which, however, becomes challenging if the confounders have missing values. Generally, causal effects are not identifiable if the confounders are missing not at random. We…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-02-04 Shu Yang , Linbo Wang , Peng Ding

The proximal causal inference framework enables the identification and estimation of causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding by leveraging two disjoint sets of observed strong proxies: negative control treatments and…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-16 Antonio Olivas-Martinez , Peter B. Gilbert , Andrea Rotnitzky