arXiv Machine Learning

The Spectral Structure of Latent Treatment Effects

arXiv:2607. 10926v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Identifying heterogeneous treatment effects under unobserved confounding is central in observational causal inference.

arXiv Statistics ML
Oct 1

Causal Inference in Possibly Nonlinear Factor Models

The paper introduces a causal inference method for treatment effect models where confounders are measured noisily. It leverages many noisy proxies linked to latent confounders through an unknown, possibly nonlinear factor structure, using a local principal subspace approximation that combines K‑nearest‑neighbor matching and principal component analysis. The authors construct doubly‑robust estimators for various causal parameters, establish their large‑sample properties, and provide uniformly consistent estimators of the conditional average treatment effect, illustrated with an empirical study on political connections and stock returns and a Monte Carlo experiment.

By Yingjie Feng
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 3

Nonparametric Partial Disentanglement via Mechanism Sparsity: Sparse Actions, Interventions and Sparse Temporal Dependencies

arXiv:2401. 04890v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This work introduces a novel principle for disentanglement we call mechanism sparsity regularization, which applies when the latent factors of interest depend sparsely on observed auxiliary variables and/or past latent factors.

By S\'ebastien Lachapelle, Pau Rodr\'iguez L\'opez, Yash Sharma, Katie Everett, R\'emi Le Priol, Alexandre Lacoste, Simon Lacoste-Julien
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Causal Inference with Unobserved Confounding: A Mixture Learning Perspective

The paper introduces a mixture‑learning framework for causal inference with unobserved confounding, treating latent confounders as sources of heterogeneity that create mixture structures in observed data. By assuming suitable structural and identifiability conditions, it shows that recovering the mixing distribution and component mechanisms allows estimation of interventional distributions and causal estimands. The authors illustrate the approach with Bernoulli mixture examples, extend it to high‑dimensional exponential‑family mixtures with dependent outcomes, and relate it to panel‑data settings, latent factor models, and synthetic interventions.

By Mansi Sood, Devavrat Shah
arXiv Statistics ML
Sep 28

Identifying Causal Effects Using a Single Proxy Variable

The paper tackles the problem of estimating causal effects when an unobserved confounder is present. It assumes a single, possibly multi‑dimensional proxy variable for the confounder and knowledge of the mechanism that generates this proxy. Under the Single Proxy Identifiability of Causal Effects (SPICE) assumption, the authors prove that the error mechanism is complete and causal effects are identifiable, extending prior proxy‑based results to continuous, multi‑dimensional settings and more flexible functional forms. They also introduce SPICE‑Net, a neural‑network‑based framework for estimating causal effects applicable to both discrete and continuous treatments.

By Silvan Vollmer, Niklas Pfister, Sebastian Weichwald
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 7

ProximalFM: Amortized Proximal Causal Inference under Hidden Confounding

ProximalFM is a transformer‑based model that uses prior‑data fitted networks (PFNs) to perform Bayesian proximal causal inference under hidden confounding. By training on synthetic data generated from structural causal models with oracle counterfactuals, it amortizes the Bayesian operator inversion into a single forward pass, producing posterior estimates of the conditional average treatment effect (CATE). The approach consistently outperforms prior methods across various proximal regimes, especially when latent confounding is strong and proxy variables are weakly informative, and it requires no dataset‑specific tuning.

By Christophe Muller, Ayub Kharel, Alex Luedtke, Chan Park, Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen, Juan L. Gamella, Rahul Krishnan, Ricardo Silva, Jakob Zeitler