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For counterfactual policy evaluation, it is important to ensure that treatment parameters are relevant to policies in question. This is especially challenging under unobserved heterogeneity, as is well featured in the definition of the…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-08-08 Sukjin Han , Shenshen Yang

This paper establishes sufficient conditions for the identification of the marginal treatment effects with multivalued treatments. Our model is based on a multinomial choice model with utility maximization. Our MTE generalizes the MTE…

Econometrics · Economics 2024-12-30 Toshiki Tsuda

We argue that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are special even among settings where average treatment effects are identified by a nonparametric unconfoundedness assumption. This claim follows from two results of Robins and Ritov (1997):…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-09-28 P. M. Aronow , James M. Robins , Theo Saarinen , Fredrik Sävje , Jasjeet Sekhon

The average treatment effect can obscure important heterogeneity when individuals respond differently to a treatment. While the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) function captures such heterogeneity, it is difficult to communicate…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-18 Anders Munch , Thomas A. Gerds

The identification of causal effects in observational studies typically relies on two standard assumptions: unconfoundedness and overlap. However, both assumptions are often questionable in practice: unconfoundedness is inherently…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-17 Han Cui , Xinran Li

Recently, there has been great interest in estimating the conditional average treatment effect using flexible machine learning methods. However, in practice, investigators often have working hypotheses about effect heterogeneity across…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-13 Chan Park , Hyunseung Kang

Treatment effect heterogeneity is central to policy evaluation, social science, and precision medicine, where interventions can affect individuals differently. In observational studies, covariates, treatment, and outcomes are often only…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-24 Shuozhi Zuo , Yixin Wang , Fan Yang

Most analyses of randomised trials with incomplete outcomes make untestable assumptions and should therefore be subjected to sensitivity analyses. However, methods for sensitivity analyses are not widely used. We propose a mean score…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-07-21 Ian R. White , James Carpenter , Nicholas J. Horton

Randomized controlled trials are the standard method for estimating causal effects, ensuring sufficient statistical power and confidence through adequate sample sizes. However, achieving such sample sizes is often challenging. This study…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-03-28 Keisuke Hanada , Masahiro Kojima

Observational studies are frequently used to estimate the effect of an exposure or treatment on an outcome. To obtain an unbiased estimate of the treatment effect, it is crucial to measure the exposure accurately. A common type of exposure…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-07-02 Suhwan Bong , Kwonsang Lee , Francesca Dominici

We study the problem of learning conditional average treatment effects (CATE) from observational data with unobserved confounders. The CATE function maps baseline covariates to individual causal effect predictions and is key for…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2018-10-09 Nathan Kallus , Xiaojie Mao , Angela Zhou

Heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs) are increasingly estimated using machine learning models that produce highly personalized predictions of treatment effects. In practice, however, predicted treatment effects are rarely interpreted,…

The average treatment effect (ATE), the mean difference in potential outcomes under treatment and control, is a canonical causal effect. Overlap, which says that all subjects have non-zero probability of either treatment status, is…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-14 Herbert P. Susmann , Alec McClean , Iván Díaz

In most nonrandomized observational studies, differences between treatment groups may arise not only due to the treatment but also because of the effect of confounders. Therefore, causal inference regarding the treatment effect is not as…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-07-04 Debashis Ghosh

In contrast to the standard learning paradigm where all classes can be observed in training data, learning with augmented classes (LAC) tackles the problem where augmented classes unobserved in the training data may emerge in the test…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-06-13 Senlin Shu , Shuo He , Haobo Wang , Hongxin Wei , Tao Xiang , Lei Feng

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

Identifying causal treatment (or exposure) effects in observational studies requires the data to satisfy the unconfoundedness assumption which is not testable using the observed data. With sensitivity analysis, one can determine how the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-01-31 Yang Ou , Lu Tang , Chung-Chou H. Chang

Given the unconfoundedness assumption, we propose new nonparametric estimators for the reduced dimensional conditional average treatment effect (CATE) function. In the first stage, the nuisance functions necessary for identifying CATE are…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-07-26 Qingliang Fan , Yu-Chin Hsu , Robert P. Lieli , Yichong Zhang

We develop a new approach for estimating average treatment effects in observational studies with unobserved group-level heterogeneity. We consider a general model with group-level unconfoundedness and provide conditions under which…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-08-31 Dmitry Arkhangelsky , Guido Imbens

We propose a new general approach for estimating the effect of a binary treatment on a continuous and potentially highly skewed response variable, the generalized quantile treatment effect (GQTE). The GQTE is defined as the difference…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2015-09-04 Sergio Venturini , Francesca Dominici , Giovanni Parmigiani