The paper introduces new one‑step and targeted minimum loss‑based estimators for the average treatment effect and the average treatment effect on the treated under the front‑door criterion. These estimators use multiple parameterizations of the observed data distribution, can avoid modeling the mediator density, and are compatible with flexible machine‑learning nuisance estimation. The authors derive conditions for root‑n consistency, asymptotic linearity, and develop doubly robust tests for identification assumptions, demonstrating improved efficiency and favorable performance in simulations and real‑world applications in education and emergency medicine.
By Anna Guo, David Benkeser, Razieh Nabi
arXiv:2105. 09254v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In many applications, researchers are interested in the direct and indirect causal effects of a treatment or exposure on an outcome of interest.
By Yizhen Xu, AmirEmad Ghassami, Numair Sani, Ilya Shpitser
The paper introduces PICLE-PFN, a foundation model for longitudinal causal effect estimation that handles dynamic treatment policies. It represents policies via in-context history-decision demonstrations and is pretrained on synthetic data from longitudinal structural causal models, enabling it to predict conditional average potential outcomes in a single forward pass without task-specific training. Experiments on synthetic and semi-synthetic benchmarks show competitive RMSE and better uncertainty calibration while reducing deployment runtime compared to conventional estimators.
By Wenxin Chen, Kyra Gan, Mingyu Lu, Zilin Jing, Fei Wang, Hoifung Poon, Tristan Naumann, Peniel Argaw
The paper investigates how learned multimodal representations of high‑dimensional health data can fail to preserve causal information, even when trained to reconstruct the data. It establishes conditions under which a representation is sufficient for causal identification, shows that interventional mediation requires stricter preservation than counterfactual comparison, and proves that reconstruction‑based objectives cannot certify sufficiency. The authors decompose the error of cross‑fitted doubly robust estimators into a first‑order representation bias and a second‑order nuisance‑estimation remainder, demonstrating that coverage can deteriorate with larger samples if the representation is insufficient. They propose a practical workflow that combines modality‑specific variational autoencoders, cross‑fitted doubly robust estimation, locked phenotypes, selective pathway analysis, portable representations, and diagnostics for representation insufficiency, exposure leakage, and sensitivity, and validate it in simulations where a rare confounder’s omission leads to severely under‑covered indirect‑effect intervals.
By Cong Cao
The paper introduces Neural ODE-LMM, a hybrid model that integrates a Neural Ordinary Differential Equation into a linear mixed‑effects framework to flexibly learn time‑varying associations between exposures and outcomes. By encoding covariate trajectories into a continuous‑time latent state, the method preserves standard likelihood inference while capturing complex, potentially cumulative effects without pre‑specifying functional forms. Simulations demonstrate accurate recovery of instantaneous and cumulative effects, and application to the 3C cohort uncovers BMI and fasting glucose trajectories linked to cognitive decline.
By Zhe Aurore Li, Quentin Clairon, C\'ecilia Samieri, Rodolphe Thi\'ebaut, M\'elanie Prague, C\'ecile Proust-Lima
arXiv:2609.22383v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Instrumental variable (IV) methods address treatment endogeneity, but with non-compliance and heterogeneous treatment effects a binary instrument gen...
By Zixuan Yao, Guosheng Yin
arXiv:2604. 16763v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Causal inference from electronic health records (EHR) is fundamentally limited by unmeasured confounding: critical clinical states such as frailty, goals of care, and mental status are documented in free-text notes but absent from structured data.
By Lei Liu, Jialin Chen, Kathy Macropol
arXiv:2607. 26521v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Conventional subgroup analyses can yield unstable and difficult-to-interpret conclusions, especially in observational biomedical data where each individual is observed under only one exposure state, true individual treatment effects are unavailable, and causal structure is uncertain.
By Vasundhara Acharya, Bulent Yener
arXiv:2608. 19383v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Average dose-response functions are widely used to summarize causal effects of continuous treatments, but most existing methods assume that the observed sample represents the target population.
By Jay Jojo Cheng, Guanhua Chen
The paper introduces a path‑specific version of the fraction of negatively affected (FNA) to separate total harm into direct and indirect components in causal mediation settings. Because these components depend on joint distributions of potential outcomes that are not point‑identified, the authors develop a partial identification framework, deriving sharp Makarov bounds and a semiparametric efficient estimator with valid confidence intervals under mild margin conditions. The framework is illustrated through numerical experiments, marking the first study of path‑specific harm decomposition and its orthogonal inference.
By Ruizi Yan, Dennis Frauen, Maresa Schr\"oder, Stefan Feuerriegel
arXiv:2606. 01184v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Many interventions alter the structure of an outcome distribution rather than its mean: they can split a population into disconnected regimes, create loops or holes, generate branches, or reorganize an outcome cloud while leaving the average response nearly unchanged.
By Usef Faghihi
The paper introduces a model‑agnostic inference framework for partially identified causal effects that leverages covariate information without requiring discrete covariates or accurate conditional distribution estimates. Using duality theory for optimal transport, the method delivers uniformly valid inference in randomized experiments, is doubly robust in observational settings, achieves asymptotic unbiasedness when nuisance parameters converge semiparametrically, and allows multiplier‑bootstrap selection of covariates and models while remaining computationally efficient. Empirical applications show the approach consistently narrows identified sets and confidence intervals without imposing extra structural assumptions.
By Wenlong Ji, Lihua Lei, Asher Spector