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Unobserved spatial confounding variables are prevalent in environmental and ecological applications where the system under study is complex and the data are often observational. Instrumental variables (IVs) are a common way to address…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-03-02 Andrew Giffin , Brian J. Reich , Shu Yang , Ana G. Rappold

Instrumental variable (IV) regression is a standard strategy for learning causal relationships between confounded treatment and outcome variables from observational data by utilizing an instrumental variable, which affects the outcome only…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-28 Liyuan Xu , Yutian Chen , Siddarth Srinivasan , Nando de Freitas , Arnaud Doucet , Arthur Gretton

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

The instrumental variable (IV) approach is commonly used to infer causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding. Existing methods typically aim to estimate the mean causal effects, whereas a few other methods focus on quantile…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-03-13 Anastasiia Holovchak , Sorawit Saengkyongam , Nicolai Meinshausen , Xinwei Shen

This paper discusses identification, estimation, and inference on dynamic local average treatment effects (LATEs) in instrumental variables (IVs) settings. First, we show that compliers--observations whose treatment status is affected by…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-09-17 Alessandro Casini , Adam McCloskey , Luca Rolla , Raimondo Pala

Estimating causal effects in a target population with unmeasured confounders is challenging, especially when instrumental variables (IVs) are unavailable. However, IVs from auxiliary populations with similar problems can help infer causal…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-06 Wei Li , Jiapeng Liu , Peng Ding , Zhi Geng

The instrumental-variables (IV) setting is standard for partial identification of causal effects when unobserved confounding makes point identification impossible. Existing approaches face methodological bottlenecks: closed-form bound…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-14 Vahid Balazadeh , Hamidreza Kamkari , Medha Barath , Ricardo Silva , Rahul G. Krishnan

Studies investigating the causal effects of spatially varying exposures on outcomes often rely on observational and spatially indexed data. A prevalent challenge is unmeasured spatial confounding, where an unobserved spatially varying…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-11-19 Sophie M. Woodward , Mauricio Tec , Francesca Dominici

Most previous studies of the causal relationship between malaria and stunting have been studies where potential confounders are controlled via regression-based methods, but these studies may have been biased by unobserved confounders.…

Applications · Statistics 2015-11-11 Hyunseung Kang , Benno Kreuels , Jürgen May , Dylan S. Small

Replicating causal estimates across different cohorts is crucial for increasing the integrity of epidemiological studies. However, strong assumptions regarding unmeasured confounding and effect modification often hinder this goal. By…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-09-23 Roy S. Zawadzki , Daniel L. Gillen

Instrumental variables (IV) methods are central to applied microeconomics. While classical approaches assume linear models with constant effects, recent literature has shifted toward the local average treatment effect (LATE) framework to…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-05-15 Tymon Słoczyński , Liyang Sun , S. Derya Uysal

Instrumental Variable (IV) provides a source of treatment randomization that is conditionally independent of the outcomes, responding to the challenges of counterfactual and confounding biases. In finance, IV construction typically relies…

General Economics · Economics 2024-11-27 Ying Chen , Ziwei Xu , Kotaro Inoue , Ryutaro Ichise

Motivated by conflicting conclusions regarding hydrocortisone's treatment effect on ICU patients with vasopressor-dependent septic shock, we developed a novel instrumental variable (IV) estimator to assess the average treatment effect (ATE)…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-03-18 Runjia Li , Victor B. Talisa , Chung-Chou H. Chang

Empirical researchers are often interested in not only whether a treatment affects an outcome of interest, but also how the treatment effect arises. Causal mediation analysis provides a formal framework to identify causal mechanisms through…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-02-01 Bora Kim

Estimating dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs) from retrospective observational data is challenging as some degree of unmeasured confounding is often expected. In this work, we develop a framework of estimating properly defined "optimal" DTRs…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-04-19 Shuxiao Chen , Bo Zhang

Instrumental variables are commonly used to estimate effects of a treatment afflicted by unmeasured confounding, and in practice instruments are often continuous (e.g., measures of distance, or treatment preference). However, available…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-07-05 Edward H. Kennedy , Scott A. Lorch , Dylan S. Small

We propose a method for defining, identifying, and estimating the marginal treatment effect (MTE) without imposing the instrumental variable (IV) assumptions of independence, exclusion, and separability (or monotonicity). Under a new…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-03-02 Zhewen Pan , Zhengxin Wang , Junsen Zhang , Yahong Zhou

Instrumental variables (IVs) are a popular and powerful tool for estimating causal effects in the presence of unobserved confounding. However, classical approaches rely on strong assumptions such as the $\textit{exclusion criterion}$, which…

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

Learning causal relationships among a set of variables, as encoded by a directed acyclic graph, from observational data is complicated by the presence of unobserved confounders. Instrumental variables (IVs) are a popular remedy for this…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-04-17 Jing Zou , Wei Li , Wei Lin