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Related papers: Causal Mediation in Natural Experiments

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Causal mediation analysis in cluster-randomized trials (CRTs) is complicated by the presence of multiple mediators, intracluster correlation, and within-cluster interference. Existing mediation methods often fall short in accommodating…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-04-14 Jiaqi Tong , Chao Cheng , Fan Li

The use of causal mediation analysis to evaluate the pathways by which an exposure affects an outcome is widespread in the social and biomedical sciences. Recent advances in this area have established formal conditions for identification…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-08-14 Isabel R. Fulcher , Xu Shi , Eric J. Tchetgen Tchetgen

Understanding causal mechanisms is crucial for explaining and generalizing empirical phenomena. Causal mediation analysis offers statistical techniques to quantify the mediation effects. Although numerous methods have been developed for…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-12 Jiawei Fu

Causal mediation analysis examines causal pathways linking exposures to disease. The estimation of interventional effects, which are mediation estimands that overcome certain identifiability problems of natural effects, has been advanced…

Mediation analysis allows one to use observational data to estimate the importance of each potential mediating pathway involved in the causal effect of an exposure on an outcome. However, current approaches to mediation analysis with…

An important problem in causal inference is to break down the total effect of a treatment on an outcome into different causal pathways and to quantify the causal effect in each pathway. For instance, in causal fairness, the total effect of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-01-10 Lu Cheng , Ruocheng Guo , Huan Liu

This paper aims to provide practitioners of causal mediation analysis with a better understanding of estimation options. We take as inputs two familiar strategies (weighting and model-based prediction) and a simple way of combining them…

Causal mediation analysis has historically been limited in two important ways: (i) a focus has traditionally been placed on binary treatments and static interventions, and (ii) direct and indirect effect decompositions have been pursued…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-01-13 Nima S. Hejazi , Kara E. Rudolph , Mark J. van der Laan , Iván Díaz

Causal mediation analysis decomposes the total effect of a treatment on an outcome into the indirect effect, operating through the mediator, and the direct effect, operating through other pathways. One can estimate only the pure indirect…

Applications · Statistics 2025-07-16 Vindyani Herath , Ronald J. Bosch , Judith J. Lok

Researchers are often interested in analyzing conditional treatment effects. One variant of this is "causal moderation," which implies that intervention upon a third (moderator) variable would alter the treatment effect. This study…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-08-25 Kirk Bansak

While estimation of the marginal (total) causal effect of a point exposure on an outcome is arguably the most common objective of experimental and observational studies in the health and social sciences, in recent years, investigators have…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2012-10-18 Eric J. Tchetgen Tchetgen , Ilya Shpitser

Mediation analysis is widely used for investigating direct and indirect causal pathways through which an effect arises. However, many mediation analysis studies are challenged by missingness in the mediator and outcome. In general, when the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-25 Shuozhi Zuo , Debashis Ghosh , Peng Ding , Fan Yang

We propose a set of causal estimands that we call the "mediated probabilities of causation." These estimands quantify the probabilities that an observed negative outcome was induced via a mediating pathway versus a direct pathway in a…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-02-14 Max Rubinstein , Maria Cuellar , Daniel Malinsky

Causal mediation analysis seeks to investigate how the treatment effect of an exposure on outcomes is mediated through intermediate variables. Although many applications involve longitudinal data, the existing methods are not directly…

Applications · Statistics 2021-02-24 Shuxi Zeng , Stacy Rosenbaum , Elizabeth Archie , Susan Alberts , Fan Li

The synthetic control method (SCM) allows estimating the causal effect of an intervention in settings where panel data on a small number of treated and control units are available. We show that the existing SCM, as well as its extensions,…

Applications · Statistics 2022-05-20 Giovanni Mellace , Alessandra Pasquini

This paper provides robust estimators and efficient inference of causal effects involving multiple interacting mediators. Most existing works either impose a linear model assumption among the mediators or are restricted to handle…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-01-12 Haoyu Wei , Hengrui Cai , Chengchun Shi , Rui Song

Recurrent events, including cardiovascular events, are commonly observed in biomedical studies. Researchers must understand the effects of various treatments on recurrent events and investigate the underlying mediation mechanisms by which…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-08 Yan-Lin Chen , Yan-Hong Chen , Pei-Fang Su , Huang-Tz Ou , An-Shun Tai

There is a growing literature on finding so-called optimal treatment rules, which are rules by which to assign treatment to individuals based on an individual's characteristics, such that a desired outcome is maximized. A related goal…

Applications · Statistics 2021-01-22 Kara E. Rudolph , Ivan Diaz

The incorporation of causal inference in mediation analysis has led to theoretical and methodological advancements -- effect definitions with causal interpretation, clarification of assumptions required for effect identification, and an…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-10-31 Trang Quynh Nguyen , Ian Schmid , Elizabeth A. Stuart

Mediation analysis is concerned with the decomposition of the total effect of an exposure on an outcome into the indirect effect through a given mediator, and the remaining direct effect. This is ideally done using longitudinal measurements…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2019-12-04 Murthy N Mittinty , Stijn Vansteelandt