Related papers: Improving control over unobservables with network …
Citation networks have been widely used to study the evolution of science through the lenses of the underlying patterns of knowledge flows among academic papers, authors, research sub-fields, and scientific journals. Here we focus on…
Estimating causal effects from observational data is not always possible due to confounding. Identifying a set of appropriate covariates (adjustment set) and adjusting for their influence can remove confounding bias; however, such a set is…
We describe a method that infers whether statistical dependences between two observed variables X and Y are due to a "direct" causal link or only due to a connecting causal path that contains an unobserved variable of low complexity, e.g.,…
Citation and coauthor networks offer an insight into the dynamics of scientific progress. We can also view them as representations of a causal structure, a logical process captured in a graph. From a causal perspective, we can ask questions…
Given only data generated by a standard confounding graph with unobserved confounder, the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) is not identifiable. To estimate the ATE, a practitioner must then either (a) collect deconfounded data;(b) run a…
The asymptotic behavior of estimates and information criteria in linear models are studied in the context of hierarchically correlated sampling units. The work is motivated by biological data collected on species where autocorrelation is…
Unobserved confounding arises when an unmeasured feature influences both the treatment and the outcome, leading to biased causal effect estimates. This issue undermines observational studies in fields like economics, medicine, ecology or…
Causal graphs may inform covariate adjustment for estimating causal effects and improve estimation efficiency by exploiting the graphical structure. In many applications, however, the target causal parameter may not be point-identified due…
A recent literature considers causal inference using noisy proxies for unobserved confounding factors. The proxies are divided into two sets that are independent conditional on the confounders. One set of proxies are `negative control…
One of the goals of probabilistic inference is to decide whether an empirically observed distribution is compatible with a candidate Bayesian network. However, Bayesian networks with hidden variables give rise to highly non-trivial…
Observed associations in a database may be due in whole or part to variations in unrecorded (latent) variables. Identifying such variables and their causal relationships with one another is a principal goal in many scientific and practical…
Distinguishing causal connections from correlations is important in many scenarios. However, the presence of unobserved variables, such as the latent confounder, can introduce bias in conditional independence testing commonly employed in…
This paper develops a class of potential outcomes models characterized by three main features: (i) Unobserved heterogeneity can be represented by a vector of potential outcomes and a type describing the manner in which an instrument…
The ability to answer causal questions is crucial in many domains, as causal inference allows one to understand the impact of interventions. In many applications, only a single intervention is possible at a given time. However, in some…
This work extends causal inference with stochastic confounders. We propose a new approach to variational estimation for causal inference based on a representer theorem with a random input space. We estimate causal effects involving latent…
In longitudinal studies where units are embedded in space or a social network, interference may arise, meaning that a unit's outcome can depend on treatment histories of others. The presence of interference poses significant challenges for…
A fundamental challenge in observational causal inference is that assumptions about unconfoundedness are not testable from data. Assessing sensitivity to such assumptions is therefore important in practice. Unfortunately, some existing…
We introduce a nonlinear operator to model diffusion on a complex undirected network under crowded conditions. We show that the asymptotic distribution of diffusing agents is a nonlinear function of the nodes' degree and saturates to a…
If $X,Y,Z$ denote sets of random variables, two different data sources may contain samples from $P_{X,Y}$ and $P_{Y,Z}$, respectively. We argue that causal discovery can help inferring properties of the `unobserved joint distributions'…
We consider the problem of diagnosis where a set of simple observations are used to infer a potentially complex hidden hypothesis. Finding the optimal subset of observations is intractable in general, thus we focus on the problem of active…