English
Related papers

Related papers: Robust Inference when Nuisance Parameters may be P…

200 papers

We present a new estimator for causal effects with panel data that builds on insights behind the widely used difference in differences and synthetic control methods. Relative to these methods we find, both theoretically and empirically,…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-22 Dmitry Arkhangelsky , Susan Athey , David A. Hirshberg , Guido W. Imbens , Stefan Wager

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

Many proposals for the identification of causal effects require an instrumental variable that satisfies strong, untestable unconfoundedness and exclusion restriction assumptions. In this paper, we show how one can potentially identify…

Suppose one is interested in estimating causal effects in the presence of potentially unmeasured confounding with the aid of a valid instrumental variable. This paper investigates the problem of making inferences about the average treatment…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-12-15 BaoLuo Sun , Wang Miao

We propose a semiparametric method to estimate the average treatment effect under the assumption of unconfoundedness given observational data. Our estimation method alleviates misspecification issues of the propensity score function by…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-01-16 Difang Huang , Jiti Gao , Tatsushi Oka

Treatment effect estimation under unconfoundedness is a fundamental task in causal inference. In response to the challenge of analyzing high-dimensional datasets collected in substantive fields such as epidemiology, genetics, economics, and…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2024-10-01 Lin Liu , Xinbo Wang , Yuhao Wang

We propose a general framework for regularization in M-estimation problems under time dependent (absolutely regular-mixing) data which encompasses many of the existing estimators. We derive non-asymptotic concentration bounds for the…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2018-01-04 Demian Pouzo

Estimation and inference procedures for synthetic control methods often do not allow for the existence of spillover effects, which are plausible in many applications. In this paper, we consider estimation and inference for synthetic control…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-01-23 Jianfei Cao , Connor Dowd

Obtaining valid treatment effect inference remains a challenging problem when dealing with numerous instruments and non-sparse control variables. In this paper, we propose a novel ridge regularization-based instrumental variables method for…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-10-17 Xiduo Chen , Xingdong Feng , Antonio F. Galvao , Yeheng Ge

Difference-in-Differences (DiD) and Synthetic Control (SC) are widely used methods for causal inference in panel data, each with distinct strengths and limitations. We propose a novel method for short-panel causal inference that integrates…

Econometrics · Economics 2025-09-26 Yixiao Sun , Haitian Xie , Yuhang Zhang

For observational studies, we study the sensitivity of causal inference when treatment assignments may depend on unobserved confounders. We develop a loss minimization approach for estimating bounds on the conditional average treatment…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-03-11 Steve Yadlowsky , Hongseok Namkoong , Sanjay Basu , John Duchi , Lu Tian

We consider the problem of constructing bounds on the average treatment effect (ATE) when unmeasured confounders exist but have bounded influence. Specifically, we assume that omitted confounders could not change the odds of treatment for…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-07-25 Jacob Dorn , Kevin Guo , Nathan Kallus

In observational studies, confounding variables affect both treatment and outcome. Moreover, instrumental variables also influence the treatment assignment mechanism. This situation sets the study apart from a standard randomized controlled…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-07-18 Atomsa Gemechu Abdisa , Yingchun Zhou , Yuqi Qiu

I develop a new identification strategy for treatment effects when noisy measurements of unobserved confounding factors are available. I use proxy variables to construct a random variable conditional on which treatment variables become…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-09-30 Kenichi Nagasawa

Synthetic control (SC) methods are commonly used to estimate the treatment effect on a single treated unit in panel data settings. An SC is a weighted average of control units built to match the treated unit, with weights typically…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-21 Xu Shi , Kendrick Li , Wang Miao , Mengtong Hu , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

The research in this paper gives a systematic investigation on the asymptotic behaviours of four inverse probability weighting (IPW)-based estimators for conditional average treatment effect, with nonparametrically, semiparametrically,…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2020-09-24 Niwen Zhou , Lixing Zhu

Caliper matching is used to estimate causal effects of a binary treatment from observational data by comparing matched treated and control units. Units are matched when their propensity scores, the conditional probability of receiving…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-04-18 Máté Kormos , Stéphanie van der Pas , Aad van der Vaart

To infer the treatment effect for a single treated unit using panel data, synthetic control methods construct a linear combination of control units' outcomes that mimics the treated unit's pre-treatment outcome trajectory. This linear…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-05-07 Hongxiang Qiu , Xu Shi , Wang Miao , Edgar Dobriban , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

We propose a generalization of the synthetic controls and synthetic interventions methodology to incorporate network interference. We consider the estimation of unit-specific potential outcomes from panel data in the presence of spillover…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-10-13 Anish Agarwal , Sarah H. Cen , Devavrat Shah , Christina Lee Yu

Covariate-adaptive randomization schemes such as the minimization and stratified permuted blocks are often applied in clinical trials to balance treatment assignments across prognostic factors. The existing theoretical developments on…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-07-21 Ting Ye , Yanyao Yi , Jun Shao