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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

Estimating causal treatment effects in observational settings is frequently compromised by selection bias arising from unobserved confounders. While traditional econometric methods struggle when these confounders are orthogonal to…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-06 Ahmed Dawoud , Osama El-Shamy

Causal inference is the process of using assumptions, study designs, and estimation strategies to draw conclusions about the causal relationships between variables based on data. This allows researchers to better understand the underlying…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-13 Anpeng Wu , Kun Kuang , Ruoxuan Xiong , Fei Wu

The estimation of causal effects with observational data continues to be a very active research area. In recent years, researchers have developed new frameworks which use machine learning to relax classical assumptions necessary for the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-05-01 Jonathan Fuhr , Philipp Berens , Dominik Papies

Instrumental-variable (IV) regression enables causal estimation under endogeneity, but modern IV problems often involve nonlinear structural effects and high-dimensional covariates. Existing nonlinear IV methods directly learn the causal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-11 Guyue Luo , Qiao Liu

This paper reviews, applies and extends recently proposed methods based on Double Machine Learning (DML) with a focus on program evaluation under unconfoundedness. DML based methods leverage flexible prediction models to adjust for…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-06-06 Michael C. Knaus

In the last decade, machine learning techniques have gained popularity for estimating causal effects. One machine learning approach that can be used for estimating an average treatment effect is Double/debiased machine learning (DML)…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-01-17 Daniele Ballinari , Nora Bearth

We show that the popular reinforcement learning (RL) strategy of estimating the state-action value (Q-function) by minimizing the mean squared Bellman error leads to a regression problem with confounding, the inputs and output noise being…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-01 Yutian Chen , Liyuan Xu , Caglar Gulcehre , Tom Le Paine , Arthur Gretton , Nando de Freitas , Arnaud Doucet

Uncertainty in the estimation of the causal effect in observational studies is often due to unmeasured confounding, i.e., the presence of unobserved covariates linking treatments and outcomes. Instrumental Variables (IV) are commonly used…

Methodology · Statistics 2019-07-30 M. Usaid Awan , Yameng Liu , Marco Morucci , Sudeepa Roy , Cynthia Rudin , Alexander Volfovsky

This paper proposes a simple, novel, and fully-Bayesian approach for causal inference in partially linear models with high-dimensional control variables. Off-the-shelf machine learning methods can introduce biases in the causal parameter…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-08-19 Francis J. DiTraglia , Laura Liu

We consider estimating a low-dimensional parameter in an estimating equation involving high-dimensional nuisances that depend on the parameter. A central example is the efficient estimating equation for the (local) quantile treatment effect…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-08-18 Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao , Masatoshi Uehara

We study inference on a low-dimensional functional $\beta$ in the presence of infinite-dimensional nuisance parameters. Classical inferential methods are typically based on Wald intervals, whose large-sample validity rests on asymptotic…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-24 Mengchu Zheng , Matteo Bonvini , Zijian Guo

We address the problem of causal effect estimation in the presence of hidden confounders, using nonparametric instrumental variable (IV) regression. A leading strategy employs spectral features - that is, learned features spanning the top…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-27 Dimitri Meunier , Antoine Moulin , Jakub Wornbard , Vladimir R. Kostic , Arthur Gretton

Instrumental variable (IV) methods are used to estimate causal effects in settings with unobserved confounding, where we cannot directly experiment on the treatment variable. Instruments are variables which only affect the outcome…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-05-26 Elisabeth Ailer , Jason Hartford , Niki Kilbertus

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

In the standard data analysis framework, data is collected (once and for all), and then data analysis is carried out. However, with the advancement of digital technology, decision-makers constantly analyze past data and generate new data…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-12-25 Jin Li , Ye Luo , Zigan Wang , Xiaowei Zhang

Latent confounders are a fundamental challenge for inferring causal effects from observational data. The instrumental variable (IV) approach is a practical way to address this challenge. Existing IV based estimators need a known IV or other…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-09 Debo Cheng , Jiuyong Li , Lin Liu , Ziqi Xu , Weijia Zhang , Jixue Liu , Thuc Duy Le

The instrumental variable (IV) approach is a widely used way to estimate the causal effects of a treatment on an outcome of interest from observational data with latent confounders. A standard IV is expected to be related to the treatment…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-11-30 Debo Cheng , Ziqi Xu , Jiuyong Li , Lin Liu , Jixue Liu , Thuc Duy Le

Estimating causal effect using machine learning (ML) algorithms can help to relax functional form assumptions if used within appropriate frameworks. However, most of these frameworks assume settings with cross-sectional data, whereas…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-09-04 Jonathan Fuhr , Dominik Papies

The paradigm of decision-making has been revolutionised by reinforcement learning and deep learning. Although this has led to significant progress in domains such as robotics, healthcare, and finance, the use of RL in practice is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-23 Daqian Shao