English
Related papers

Related papers: How Wrong Can Your Counterfactual Be? Quantifying …

200 papers

When engagement with a randomized trial is driven by factors that affect the outcome or when trial engagement directly affects the outcome independent of treatment, the average treatment effect among trial participants is unlikely to…

We consider a causal inference model in which individuals interact in a social network and they may not comply with the assigned treatments. In particular, we suppose that the form of network interference is unknown to researchers. To…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-10-24 Tadao Hoshino , Takahide Yanagi

The capacity to address counterfactual "what if" inquiries is crucial for understanding and making use of causal influences. Traditional counterfactual inference, under Pearls' counterfactual framework, typically depends on having access to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-02-29 Shaoan Xie , Biwei Huang , Bin Gu , Tongliang Liu , Kun Zhang

One of the fundamental challenges in drawing causal inferences from observational studies is that the assumption of no unmeasured confounding is not testable from observed data. Therefore, assessing sensitivity to this assumption's…

Methodology · Statistics 2024-06-25 Md Abdul Basit , Mahbub A. H. M. Latif , Abdus S Wahed

The possibility of unmeasured confounding is one of the main limitations for causal inference from observational studies. There are different methods for (partially) empirically assessing the plausibility of unconfoundedness. However, most…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-10-28 Fernando Pires Hartwig , Kate Tilling , George Davey Smith

The use of machine learning systems to support decision making in healthcare raises questions as to what extent these systems may introduce or exacerbate disparities in care for historically underrepresented and mistreated groups, due to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-16 Stephen Pfohl , Tony Duan , Daisy Yi Ding , Nigam H. Shah

In observational studies, identification of ATEs is generally achieved by assuming that the correct set of confounders has been measured and properly included in the relevant models. Because this assumption is both strong and untestable, a…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-12-18 Matteo Bonvini , Edward H Kennedy

Randomized experiments have become a cornerstone of evidence-based decision-making in contexts ranging from online platforms to public health. However, in experimental settings with network interference, a unit's treatment can influence…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-22 Sadegh Shirani , Yuwei Luo , William Overman , Ruoxuan Xiong , Mohsen Bayati

We consider estimation and inference of the effects of a policy in the absence of an untreated or control group. We obtain unbiased estimators of individual (heterogeneous) treatment effects and a consistent and asymptotically normal…

Econometrics · Economics 2026-01-13 Irene Botosaru , Raffaella Giacomini , Martin Weidner

This paper develops a general causal inference method for treatment effects models with noisily measured confounders. The key feature is that a large set of noisy measurements are linked with the underlying latent confounders through an…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-10-14 Yingjie Feng

Most causal inference studies rely on the assumption of overlap to estimate population or sample average causal effects. When data exhibit non-overlap, estimation of these estimands requires reliance on model specifications, due to poor…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-09-17 Rachel C. Nethery , Fabrizia Mealli , Francesca Dominici

We address the problem of integrating data from multiple, possibly biased, observational and interventional studies, to eventually compute counterfactuals in structural causal models. We start from the case of a single observational dataset…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-08-01 Marco Zaffalon , Alessandro Antonucci , Rafael Cabañas , David Huber

Retrospective causal questions ask what would have happened to an observed individual had they received a different treatment. We study the problem of estimating $\mu(x,y)=\mathbb{E}[Y(1)\mid X=x,Y(0)=y]$, the expected counterfactual…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-03-31 Juraj Bodik

Estimating effects of spatially structured exposures is complicated by unmeasured spatial confounders, which undermine identifiability in spatial linear regression models unless structural assumptions are imposed. We develop a general…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-12-30 Anik Burman , Elizabeth L. Ogburn , Abhirup Datta

Negative control is a strategy for learning the causal relationship between treatment and outcome in the presence of unmeasured confounding. The treatment effect can nonetheless be identified if two auxiliary variables are available: a…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-03-24 Rahul Singh

Data fusion techniques integrate information from heterogeneous data sources to improve learning, generalization, and decision making across data sciences. In causal inference, these methods leverage rich observational data to improve…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-06-02 Quinn Lanners , Cynthia Rudin , Alexander Volfovsky , Harsh Parikh

In this paper, we discuss causal inference on the efficacy of a treatment or medication on a time-to-event outcome with competing risks. Although the treatment group can be randomized, there can be confoundings between the compliance and…

Methodology · Statistics 2016-12-06 Cheng Zheng , Ran Dai , Parameswaran Hari , Mei-Jie Zhang

Estimating treatment effects from observational data is challenging due to two main reasons: (a) hidden confounding, and (b) covariate mismatch (control and treatment groups not having identical distributions). Long lines of works exist…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-30 Praharsh Nanavati , Ranjitha Prasad , Karthikeyan Shanmugam

The identification of causal effects in observational studies typically relies on two standard assumptions: unconfoundedness and overlap. However, both assumptions are often questionable in practice: unconfoundedness is inherently…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-17 Han Cui , Xinran Li

In causal inference, sensitivity models assess how unmeasured confounders could alter causal analyses, but the sensitivity parameter -- which quantifies the degree of unmeasured confounding -- is often difficult to interpret. For this…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-09-04 Alec McClean , Zach Branson , Edward H. Kennedy