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Many treatment variables used in empirical applications nest multiple unobserved versions of a treatment. I show that instrumental variable (IV) estimands for the effect of a composite treatment are IV-specific weighted averages of effects…

General Economics · Economics 2022-11-24 Clint Harris

Estimating conditional average treatment effects (CATEs) from observational data is relevant in many fields such as personalized medicine. However, in practice, the treatment assignment is usually confounded by unobserved variables and thus…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-01-24 Dennis Frauen , Stefan Feuerriegel

We revisit the problem of estimating the local average treatment effect (LATE) and the local average treatment effect on the treated (LATT) when control variables are available, either to render the instrumental variable (IV) suitably…

Econometrics · Economics 2022-11-16 Tymon Słoczyński , S. Derya Uysal , Jeffrey M. Wooldridge

Instrumental variables (IV) regression is widely used to estimate causal treatment effects in settings where receipt of treatment is not fully random, but there exists an instrument that generates exogenous variation in treatment exposure.…

Econometrics · Economics 2021-08-10 Stephen Coussens , Jann Spiess

Individualized treatment rules (ITRs) are considered a promising recipe to deliver better policy interventions. One key ingredient in optimal ITR estimation problems is to estimate the average treatment effect conditional on a subject's…

Methodology · Statistics 2021-03-16 Hongming Pu , Bo Zhang

Instrumental variable (IV) methods are widely used to infer treatment effects in the presence of unmeasured confounding. In this paper, we study nonparametric inference with an IV under a separable binary treatment choice model, which…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-03 Chan Park , Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

Estimating the conditional average treatment effect (CATE) from observational data is relevant for many applications such as personalized medicine. Here, we focus on the widespread setting where the observational data come from multiple…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-05 Jonas Schweisthal , Dennis Frauen , Mihaela van der Schaar , Stefan Feuerriegel

In offline reinforcement learning (RL) an optimal policy is learned solely from a priori collected observational data. However, in observational data, actions are often confounded by unobserved variables. Instrumental variables (IVs), in…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-10-16 Luofeng Liao , Zuyue Fu , Zhuoran Yang , Yixin Wang , Mladen Kolar , Zhaoran Wang

We discuss the fundamental issue of identification in linear instrumental variable (IV) models with unknown IV validity. With the assumption of the "sparsest rule", which is equivalent to the plurality rule but becomes operational in…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-12-06 Yiqi Lin , Frank Windmeijer , Xinyuan Song , Qingliang Fan

We study the finite sample behavior of Lasso-based inference methods such as post double Lasso and debiased Lasso. We show that these methods can exhibit substantial omitted variable biases (OVBs) due to Lasso not selecting relevant…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2021-09-15 Kaspar Wuthrich , Ying Zhu

A common issue in learning decision-making policies in data-rich settings is spurious correlations in the offline dataset, which can be caused by hidden confounders. Instrumental variable (IV) regression, which utilises a key unconfounded…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Daqian Shao , Ashkan Soleymani , Francesco Quinzan , Marta Kwiatkowska

This paper introduces tools for assessing the sensitivity, to unobserved confounding, of a common estimator of the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome that employs weights: the weighted linear regression of the outcome on the…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-08-06 Leonard Wainstein , Chad Hazlett

Traditional instrumental variable (IV) estimators face a fundamental constraint: they can only accommodate as many endogenous treatment variables as available instruments. This limitation becomes particularly challenging in settings where…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Shiangyi Lin , Hui Lan , Vasilis Syrgkanis

Interpreting black-box machine learning models is challenging due to their strong dependence on data and inherently non-parametric nature. This paper reintroduces the concept of importance through "Marginal Variable Importance Metric"…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-01-30 Mohammad Kaviul Anam Khan , Olli Saarela , Rafal Kustra

Instrumental variables are commonly used to estimate effects of a treatment afflicted by unmeasured confounding, and in practice instruments are often continuous (e.g., measures of distance, or treatment preference). However, available…

Methodology · Statistics 2018-07-05 Edward H. Kennedy , Scott A. Lorch , Dylan S. Small

We study the problem of nonparametric instrumental variable regression with observed covariates, which we refer to as NPIV-O. Compared with standard nonparametric instrumental variable regression (NPIV), the additional observed covariates…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-11-25 Zikai Shen , Zonghao Chen , Dimitri Meunier , Ingo Steinwart , Arthur Gretton , Zhu Li

Instrumental variable methods are fundamental to causal inference when treatment assignment is confounded by unobserved variables. In this article, we develop a general nonparametric causal framework for identification and learning with…

Methodology · Statistics 2026-02-10 Shuyuan Chen , Peng Zhang , Yifan Cui

Instrumental variable (IV) methods allow us the opportunity to address unmeasured confounding in causal inference. However, most IV methods are only applicable to discrete or continuous outcomes with very few IV methods for censored…

Methodology · Statistics 2020-09-30 Youjin Lee , Edward H. Kennedy , Nandita Mitra

Applied work often studies the effect of a binary variable ("treatment") using linear models with additive effects. I study the interpretation of the OLS estimands in such models when treatment effects are heterogeneous. I show that the…

Econometrics · Economics 2020-05-21 Tymon Słoczyński

This paper develops an empirical balancing approach for the estimation of treatment effects under two-sided noncompliance using a binary conditionally independent instrumental variable. The method weighs both treatment and outcome…

Econometrics · Economics 2020-07-10 Phillip Heiler