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Counterfactual inference aims to answer retrospective "what if" questions and thus belongs to the most fine-grained type of inference in Pearl's causality ladder. Existing methods for counterfactual inference with continuous outcomes aim at…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-01-12 Valentyn Melnychuk , Dennis Frauen , Stefan Feuerriegel

Counterfactual inference aims to estimate the counterfactual outcome at the individual level given knowledge of an observed treatment and the factual outcome, with broad applications in fields such as epidemiology, econometrics, and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-06 Peng Wu , Haoxuan Li , Chunyuan Zheng , Yan Zeng , Jiawei Chen , Yang Liu , Ruocheng Guo , Kun Zhang

We introduce new inference procedures for counterfactual and synthetic control methods for policy evaluation. We recast the causal inference problem as a counterfactual prediction and a structural breaks testing problem. This allows us to…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-01-26 Victor Chernozhukov , Kaspar Wüthrich , Yinchu Zhu

We develop a novel method for counterfactual analysis based on observational data using prediction intervals for units under different exposures. Unlike methods that target heterogeneous or conditional average treatment effects of an…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-07-18 Dave Zachariah , Petre Stoica

We propose a framework for analyzing the sensitivity of counterfactuals to parametric assumptions about the distribution of latent variables in structural models. In particular, we derive bounds on counterfactuals as the distribution of…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-03-26 Timothy Christensen , Benjamin Connault

Algorithms are commonly used to predict outcomes under a particular decision or intervention, such as predicting whether an offender will succeed on parole if placed under minimal supervision. Generally, to learn such counterfactual…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2021-04-19 Amanda Coston , Edward H. Kennedy , Alexandra Chouldechova

Evaluation of counterfactual queries (e.g., "If A were true, would C have been true?") is important to fault diagnosis, planning, determination of liability, and policy analysis. We present a method of revaluating counterfactuals when the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-02-21 Alexander Balke , Judea Pearl

Counterfactual reasoning allows us to explore hypothetical scenarios in order to explain the impacts of our decisions. However, addressing such inquires is impossible without establishing the appropriate mathematical framework. In this…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Kurt Butler , Marija Iloska , Petar M. Djuric

We address the problem of integrating data from multiple, possibly biased, observational and interventional studies, to eventually compute counterfactuals in structural causal models. We start from the case of a single observational dataset…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-08-01 Marco Zaffalon , Alessandro Antonucci , Rafael Cabañas , David Huber

This paper develops a unified identification framework for counterfactual analysis in incomplete models characterized by support and moment restrictions. I demonstrate that identifying structural parameters and conducting counterfactual…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-03-10 Lixiong Li

In this paper, we estimate impulse responses by local projections in high-dimensional settings. We use the desparsified (de-biased) lasso to estimate the high-dimensional local projections, while leaving the impulse response parameter of…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-04-18 Robert Adamek , Stephan Smeekes , Ines Wilms

The local projection-instrumental variable (LP-IV) literature has been largely silent on cases in which impulse responses are set-identified, arising when the shock of interest is composite and instruments are correlated with multiple…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-01-23 Bonsoo Koo , Seojeong Lee , Myung Hwan Seo , Masaya Takano

Our work addresses a fundamental problem in the context of counterfactual inference for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). Given an MDP path $\tau$, this kind of inference allows us to derive counterfactual paths $\tau'$ describing what-if…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-03-28 Milad Kazemi , Jessica Lally , Ekaterina Tishchenko , Hana Chockler , Nicola Paoletti

Learning-based approaches, such as reinforcement and imitation learning are gaining popularity in decision-making for autonomous driving. However, learned policies often fail to generalize and cannot handle novel situations well. Asking and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-11-13 Patrick Hart , Alois Knoll

Counterfactuals are often described as 'retrospective,' focusing on hypothetical alternatives to a realized past. This description relates to an often implicit assumption about the structure and stability of exogenous variables in the…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-12-09 Lucius E. J. Bynum , Joshua R. Loftus , Julia Stoyanovich

This paper presents a comprehensive local projections (LP) framework for estimating future responses to current shocks, robust to high-dimensional controls without relying on sparsity assumptions. The approach is applicable to various…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-10-04 Jooyoung Cha

Retrospective causal questions ask what would have happened to an observed individual had they received a different treatment. We study the problem of estimating $\mu(x,y)=\mathbb{E}[Y(1)\mid X=x,Y(0)=y]$, the expected counterfactual…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-31 Juraj Bodik

We introduce a new framework for characterizing identified sets of structural and counterfactual parameters in econometric models. By reformulating the identification problem as a set membership question, we leverage the separating…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-12-31 Irene Botosaru , Isaac Loh , Chris Muris

This paper introduces a simple framework of counterfactual estimation for causal inference with time-series cross-sectional data, in which we estimate the average treatment effect on the treated by directly imputing counterfactual outcomes…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-08-16 Licheng Liu , Ye Wang , Yiqing Xu

We study a new model where the potential outcomes, corresponding to the values of a (possibly continuous) treatment, are linked through common factors. The factors can be estimated using a panel of regressors. We propose a procedure to…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-01-09 Jad Beyhum