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Related papers: Causal Mediation in Natural Experiments

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Causal mediation analysis seeks to determine whether an independent variable affects a response variable directly or whether it does so indirectly, by way of a mediator. The existing statistical tests to determine the existence of an…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-09-28 John Kidd , Dan-Yu Lin

Decomposing a total causal effect into natural direct and indirect effects is central to revealing causal mechanisms. Conventional methods achieve the decomposition by specifying an outcome model as a linear function of the treatment, the…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-06-05 Guanglei Hong

Causal mediation analysis is complicated with multiple effect definitions that require different sets of assumptions for identification. This paper provides a systematic explanation of such assumptions. We define five potential outcome…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-09-26 Trang Quynh Nguyen , Ian Schmid , Elizabeth L. Ogburn , Elizabeth A. Stuart

The increase in the use of mobile and wearable devices now allows dense assessment of mediating processes over time. For example, a pharmacological intervention may have an effect on smoking cessation via reductions in momentary withdrawal…

The goal of causal mediation analysis, often described within the potential outcomes framework, is to decompose the effect of an exposure on an outcome of interest along different causal pathways. Using the assumption of sequential…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-11-09 Lexi Rene , Antonio R. Linero , Elizabeth Slate

E-commerce companies have a number of online products, such as organic search, sponsored search, and recommendation modules, to fulfill customer needs. Although each of these products provides a unique opportunity for users to interact with…

Applications · Statistics 2020-06-23 Xuan Yin , Liangjie Hong

In causal mediation analysis, identification of existing causal direct or indirect effects requires untestable assumptions in which potential outcomes and potential mediators are independent. This paper defines a new causal direct and…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-09-29 Takahiro Hoshino

Proximal causal inference was recently proposed as a framework to identify causal effects from observational data in the presence of hidden confounders for which proxies are available. In this paper, we extend the proximal causal inference…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2023-01-27 AmirEmad Ghassami , Alan Yang , Ilya Shpitser , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

We demonstrate a comprehensive semiparametric approach to causal mediation analysis, addressing the complexities inherent in settings with longitudinal and continuous treatments, confounders, and mediators. Our methodology utilizes a…

Identification of standard mediated effects such as the natural indirect effect relies on heavy causal assumptions. By circumventing such assumptions, so-called randomized interventional indirect effects have gained popularity in the…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-10-03 Caleb H. Miles

Mediation analysis has traditionally focused on outcome-level summary contrasts, such as mean effects, which may obscure substantial distributional changes induced by complex and nonlinear causal mechanisms. We propose Distributional Causal…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-05-05 Jinlun Zhang , Haoneng Huang , Zishu Zhan , Chunquan Ou

Causal mediation analysis usually requires strong assumptions, such as ignorability of the mediator, which may not hold in many social and scientific studies. Motivated by a multilevel randomized treatment experiment using functional…

Applications · Statistics 2017-07-11 Yi Zhao , Xi Luo

Identifying covariates that modify treatment effects is a central problem in causal inference. Yet existing data-adaptive procedures do not provide finite-sample control over the expected number of false discoveries, risking spurious…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-12 Falco J. Bargagli-Stoffi , Omar Melikechi

Meta-analysis is commonly used to combine results from multiple clinical trials, but traditional meta-analysis methods do not refer explicitly to a population of individuals to whom the results apply and it is not clear how to use their…

The procedure for establishing mediation, i.e., determining that an independent variable X affects a dependent variable Y through some mediator M, has been under debate. The classic causal steps require that a "total effect" be significant,…

Econometrics · Economics 2023-09-26 Tingxuan Han , Luxi Zhang , Xinshu Zhao , Ke Deng

Causal decomposition analysis provides a way to identify mediators that contribute to health disparities between marginalized and non-marginalized groups. In particular, the degree to which a disparity would be reduced or remain after…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-09-16 Soojin Park , Suyeon Kang , Chioun Lee

Causal mediation analysis is widely utilized to separate the causal effect of treatment into its direct effect on the outcome and its indirect effect through an intermediate variable (the mediator). In this study we introduce a functional…

Applications · Statistics 2018-05-21 Yi Zhao , Xi Luo , Martin Lindquist , Brian Caffo

Causal effect estimation from observational data is one of the essential problems in causal inference. However, most estimation methods rely on the strong assumption that all confounders are observed, which is impractical and untestable in…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-02-14 Yubai Yuan , Annie Qu

Mediation analysis, which started with Baron and Kenny (1986), is used extensively by applied researchers. Indirect and direct effects are the part of a treatment effect that is mediated by a covariate and the part that is not. Subsequent…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-12-17 Judith J. Lok , Ronald J. Bosch

In causal mediation analysis, the natural direct and indirect effects (natural effects) are nonparametrically unidentifiable in the presence of treatment-induced confounding, which motivated the development of randomized interventional…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-07-22 Ang Yu , Li Ge , Felix Elwert