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Related papers: Bounds for causal mediation effects

200 papers

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

In randomized trials, once the total effect of the intervention has been estimated, it is often of interest to explore mechanistic effects through mediators along the causal pathway between the randomized treatment and the outcome. In the…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-12-28 Erin E Gabriel , Michael C Sachs , Arvid Sjölander

Although the exposure can be randomly assigned in studies of mediation effects, any form of direct intervention on the mediator is often infeasible. As a result, unmeasured mediator-outcome confounding can seldom be ruled out. We propose…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-09-30 BaoLuo Sun , Ting Ye

Recent approaches to causal inference have focused on causal effects defined as contrasts between the distribution of counterfactual outcomes under hypothetical interventions on the nodes of a graphical model. In this article we develop…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-04-26 Iván Díaz

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

The proximal causal inference framework enables the identification and estimation of causal effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding by leveraging two disjoint sets of observed strong proxies: negative control treatments and…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-16 Antonio Olivas-Martinez , Peter B. Gilbert , Andrea Rotnitzky

We present a method for assessing the sensitivity of the true causal effect to unmeasured confounding. The method requires the analyst to set two intuitive parameters. Otherwise, the method is assumption-free. The method returns an interval…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-02-07 Jose M. Peña

Causal mediation analysis can improve understanding of the mechanisms underlying epidemiologic associations. However, the utility of natural direct and indirect effect estimation has been limited by the assumption of no confounder of the…

Applications · Statistics 2020-06-16 Kara E. Rudolph , Oleg Sofrygin , Wenjing Zheng , Mark J. van der Laan

The average causal mediation effect (ACME) and the natural direct effect (NDE) are two parameters of primary interest in causal mediation analysis. However, the two causal parameters are not identifiable from randomized experimental data in…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-04 Wei Liang , Changbao Wu

Causal inference from observational data is crucial for many disciplines such as medicine and economics. However, sharp bounds for causal effects under relaxations of the unconfoundedness assumption (causal sensitivity analysis) are subject…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-17 Dennis Frauen , Valentyn Melnychuk , Stefan Feuerriegel

An essential goal of program evaluation and scientific research is the investigation of causal mechanisms. Over the past several decades, causal mediation analysis has been used in medical and social sciences to decompose the treatment…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-15 K. C. G. Chan , K. Imai , S. C. P. Yam , Z. Zhang

Mediation analysis breaks down the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome into an indirect effect, acting through a third group of variables called mediators, and a direct effect, operating through other mechanisms. Mediation analysis…

Applications · Statistics 2025-05-13 Judith Abécassis , Houssam Zenati , Sami Boumaïza , Julie Josse , Bertrand Thirion

Causal mediation analysis is an important statistical method in social and medical studies, as it can provide insights about why an intervention works and inform the development of future interventions. Currently, most causal mediation…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-01-26 Cheng Zheng , David C. Atkins , Melissa A. Lewis , Xiao-Hua Zhou

Causal indirect and direct effects provide an interpretable method for decomposing the total effect of an exposure on an outcome into the effect through a mediator and the effect through all other pathways. When the mediator is a biomarker,…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-08-02 Ariel Chernofsky , Ronald J. Bosch , Judith J. Lok

Causal mediation analysis aims at disentangling a treatment effect into an indirect mechanism operating through an intermediate outcome or mediator, as well as the direct effect of the treatment on the outcome of interest. However, the…

Econometrics · Economics 2020-05-05 Martin Huber , Lukáš Lafférs

A parametric expression for causal natural direct and indirect effects is derived for the setting of a binary outcome with a binary mediator. The proposed effect decomposition does not require the outcome to be rare and generalizes the…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-04-13 Marco Doretti , Martina Raggi , Elena Stanghellini

Causal mediation analysis has been extended to estimate path-specific effects with multiple intermediate variables, isolating treatment effects through a mediator of interest while excluding pathways through its ancestors. Such analyses…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-05-12 Yang Bai , Sihan Wu , Baoluo Sun , Yifan Cui

Causal mediation analysis is used to evaluate direct and indirect causal effects of a treatment on an outcome of interest through an intermediate variable or a mediator.It is difficult to identify the direct and indirect causal effects…

Applications · Statistics 2020-01-14 Wei Li , Chunchen Liu , Zhi Geng , John Murray

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…

Causal mediation analysis is a powerful tool for disentangling the total effect of a treatment into its direct effect on the outcome and its indirect effect mediated through an intermediate variable. However, in observational studies,…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-04-28 Yuhao Deng , Haoyu Wei , Zhongzhe Ouyang