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Policy learning algorithms are widely used in areas such as personalized medicine and advertising to develop individualized treatment regimes. However, most methods force a decision even when predictions are uncertain, which is risky in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-30 Ayush Sawarni , Jikai Jin , Justin Whitehouse , Vasilis Syrgkanis

Recent work has made important contributions in the development of causally-interpretable meta-analysis. These methods transport treatment effects estimated in a collection of randomized trials to a target population of interest. Ideally,…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-08 Justin M. Clark , Kollin W. Rott , James S. Hodges , Jared D. Huling

We propose a method for estimation and inference for bounds for heterogeneous causal effect parameters in general sample selection models where the treatment can affect whether an outcome is observed and no exclusion restrictions are…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-07-29 Phillip Heiler

We study treatment effect modifiers for causal analysis in a social network, where neighbors' characteristics or network structure may affect the outcome of a unit, and the goal is to identify sub-populations with varying treatment effects…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2021-11-09 Amir Gilad , Harsh Parikh , Sudeepa Roy , Babak Salimi

Policy learning utilizing observational data is pivotal across various domains, with the objective of learning the optimal treatment assignment policy while adhering to specific constraints such as fairness, budget, and simplicity. This…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-10-12 Pan Zhao , Antoine Chambaz , Julie Josse , Shu Yang

In this paper we study the problems of estimating heterogeneity in causal effects in experimental or observational studies and conducting inference about the magnitude of the differences in treatment effects across subsets of the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-06-08 Susan Athey , Guido Imbens

Conjoint experiments have become central to survey research in political science and related fields because they allow researchers to study preferences across multiple attributes simultaneously. Beyond estimating main effects, scholars…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-03 Steven Wang , Isys Johnson , Jessica Grogan , Lalit Jain , Atri Rudra , Kyle Hunt , Kenneth Joseph

We take steps towards causally interpretable meta-analysis by describing methods for transporting causal inferences from a collection of randomized trials to a new target population, one-trial-at-a-time and pooling all trials. We discuss…

Scientists need to compare the support for models based on observed phenomena. The main goal of the evidential paradigm is to quantify the strength of evidence in the data for a reference model relative to an alternative model. This is done…

Observational studies of causal effects require adjustment for confounding factors. In the tabular setting, where these factors are well-defined, separate random variables, the effect of confounding is well understood. However, in public…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-16 Connor T. Jerzak , Fredrik Johansson , Adel Daoud

Causal inference in a program evaluation setting faces the problem of external validity when the treatment effect in the target population is different from the treatment effect identified from the population of which the sample is…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-12-23 Kyungchul Song , Zhengfei Yu

We provide an inferential framework to assess variable importance for heterogeneous treatment effects. This assessment is especially useful in high-risk domains such as medicine, where decision makers hesitate to rely on black-box treatment…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-11 Pawel Morzywolek , Peter B. Gilbert , Alex Luedtke

Fairness and interpretability play an important role in the adoption of decision-making algorithms across many application domains. These requirements are intended to avoid undesirable group differences and to alleviate concerns related to…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-09-16 Nora Bearth , Michael Lechner , Jana Mareckova , Fabian Muny

When does society eventually learn the truth, or take the correct action, via observational learning? In a general model of sequential learning over social networks, we identify a simple condition for learning dubbed excludability.…

Theoretical Economics · Economics 2024-04-05 Navin Kartik , SangMok Lee , Tianhao Liu , Daniel Rappoport

Causal models communicate our assumptions about causes and effects in real-world phe- nomena. Often the interest lies in the identification of the effect of an action which means deriving an expression from the observed probability…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-06-20 Santtu Tikka , Juha Karvanen

We propose a new method for estimating causal effects in longitudinal/panel data settings that we call generalized difference-in-differences. Our approach unifies two alternative approaches in these settings: ignorability estimators (e.g.,…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-12-12 Denis Agniel , Max Rubinstein , Jessie Coe , Maria DeYoreo

Most approaches in algorithmic fairness constrain machine learning methods so the resulting predictions satisfy one of several intuitive notions of fairness. While this may help private companies comply with non-discrimination laws or avoid…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-06-08 Matt J. Kusner , Chris Russell , Joshua R. Loftus , Ricardo Silva

We propose a doubly robust approach to characterizing treatment effect heterogeneity in observational studies. We develop a frequentist inferential procedure that utilizes posterior distributions for both the propensity score and outcome…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-07-21 Heejun Shin , Joseph Antonelli

Traditional machine learning relies on explicit models and domain assumptions, limiting flexibility and interpretability. We introduce a model-free framework using surprisal (information theoretic uncertainty) to directly analyze and…

This paper shows how to use a randomized saturation experimental design to identify and estimate causal effects in the presence of spillovers--one person's treatment may affect another's outcome--and one-sided non-compliance--subjects can…