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Combining Experimental and Observational Data for Identification and Estimation of Long-Term Causal Effects

AmirEmad Ghassami, Chang Liu, Alan Yang, David Richardson, Ilya Shpitser, Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen

arXiv 26 Jan 2022 · Statistics — Methodology · 7 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2201.10743 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We study identifying and estimating the causal effect of a treatment variable on a long-term outcome using data from an observational and an experimental domain. The observational data are subject to unobserved confounding. Furthermore, subjects in the experiment are only followed for a short period; thus, long-term effects are unobserved, though short-term effects are available. Consequently, neither data source alone suffices for causal inference on the long-term outcome, necessitating a principled fusion of the two. We propose three approaches for data fusion for the purpose of identifying and estimating the causal effect. The first assumes equal confounding bias for short-term and long-term outcomes. The second weakens this assumption by leveraging an observed confounder for which the short-term and long-term potential outcomes share the same partial additive association with this confounder. The third approach employs proxy variables of the latent confounder of the treatment-outcome relationship, extending the proximal causal inference framework to the data fusion setting. For each approach, we develop influence function-based estimators and analyze their robustness properties. We illustrate our methods by estimating the effect of class size on 8th-grade SAT scores using data from the Project STAR experiment combined with observational data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study.

Citation extraction

30
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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Athey, S., Chetty, R., and Imbens, G (2020) Combining experimental and observational data to estimate treatment effects on long term outcomes0.96911591%
2Miao, W., Geng, Z., and Tchetgen Tchetgen, E. J (2018) Identifying causal effects with proxy variables of an unmeasured confounder0.8434475%
3Sofer, T., Richardson, D. B., Colicino, E., Schwartz, J., and Tchetg… (2016) On negative outcome control of unobserved confounding as a generalization of difference-in-differences self0.8434375%
4Athey, S. and Imbens, G. W (2006) Identification and inference in nonlinear difference-in-differences models0.7373367%
5Cui, Y., Pu, H., Shi, X., Miao, W., and Tchetgen Tchetgen, E (2020) Semiparametric proximal causal inference0.7373367%
6Tchetgen Tchetgen, E. J., Ying, A., Cui, Y., Shi, X., and Miao, W (2020) An introduction to proximal causal learning0.7373367%
7Richardson, D. B. and Tchetgen Tchetgen, E. J (2022) Bespoke instruments: A new tool for addressing unmeasured confounders self0.73732100%
8Achilles, C., Bain, H. P., Bellott, F., Boyd-Zaharias, J., Finn, J.,… (2008) Tennessee's Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project0.64422100%
9Angrist, J. D. and Pischke, J.-S (2008) Mostly harmless econometrics0.64422100%
10Card, D (1990) The impact of the mariel boatlift on the miami labor market0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 30 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Identification of Long-Term Treatment Effects via Temporal Links, Observational, and Experimental Data0.92843
2The Proximal Surrogate Index: Long-Term Treatment Effects under Unobserved Confounding0.73732
3Program Evaluation with Remotely Sensed Outcomes0.64422
4A Cautionary Tale on Integrating Studies with Disparate Outcome Measures for Causal Inference0.51121
5Causal Models for Longitudinal and Panel Data: A Survey0.40511
6Non-linear Triple Changes Estimator for Targeted Policies0.40511
7Testing Effect Homogeneity and Confounding in High-Dimensional Experimental and Observational Studies0.40511