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Long-term Causal Inference Under Persistent Confounding via Data Combination

Guido Imbens, Nathan Kallus, Xiaojie Mao, Yuhao Wang

arXiv 15 Feb 2022 · Statistics — Methodology · publishedJournal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B (Statistical Methodology) (2024) · 10 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2202.07234 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We study the identification and estimation of long-term treatment effects when both experimental and observational data are available. Since the long-term outcome is observed only after a long delay, it is not measured in the experimental data, but only recorded in the observational data. However, both types of data include observations of some short-term outcomes. In this paper, we uniquely tackle the challenge of persistent unmeasured confounders, i.e., some unmeasured confounders that can simultaneously affect the treatment, short-term outcomes and the long-term outcome, noting that they invalidate identification strategies in previous literature. To address this challenge, we exploit the sequential structure of multiple short-term outcomes, and develop three novel identification strategies for the average long-term treatment effect. We further propose three corresponding estimators and prove their asymptotic consistency and asymptotic normality. We finally apply our methods to estimate the effect of a job training program on long-term employment using semi-synthetic data. We numerically show that our proposals outperform existing methods that fail to handle persistent confounders.

Citation extraction

92
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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
1AmirEmad Ghassami, Ilya Shpitser, and Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen (2022) Combining experimental and observational data for identification of long-term causal effects0.93511482%
2Yifan Cui, Hongming Pu, Xu Shi, Wang Miao, and Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen (2020) Semiparametric proximal causal inference0.92844100%
3Wang Miao and Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen (2018) A confounding bridge approach for double negative control inference on causal effects (supplement and sample codes are included)0.92844100%
4Guido Imbens, Nathan Kallus, and Xiaojie Mao (2021) Controlling for unmeasured confounding in panel data using minimal bridge functions: From two-way fixed effects to factor models self0.92843100%
5Susan Athey, Raj Chetty, Guido W Imbens, and Hyunseung Kang (2019) The surrogate index: Combining short-term proxies to estimate long-term treatment effects more rapidly and precisely self0.91613577%
6Susan Athey, Raj Chetty, and Guido Imbens (2020) Combining experimental and observational data to estimate treatment effects on long term outcomes, 2020 self0.90928875%
7Nathan Kallus, Xiaojie Mao, and Masatoshi Uehara (2021) Causal inference under unmeasured confounding with negative controls: A minimax learning approach, 2021 self0.8947671%
8Wang Miao, Zhi Geng, and Eric Tchetgen (2016) Identifying causal effects with proxy variables of an unmeasured confounder0.8746467%
9Nishanth Dikkala, Greg Lewis, Lester Mackey, and Vasilis Syrgkanis (2020) Minimax estimation of conditional moment models0.81142100%
10V Chernozhukov, W Newey, J Robins, and R Singh (2019) Double/de-biased machine learning of global and local parameters using regularized riesz representers0.7373367%

Showing the top 10 of 92 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
1The Proximal Surrogate Index: Long-Term Treatment Effects under Unobserved Confounding1.00063
2Identification of Long-Term Treatment Effects via Temporal Links, Observational, and Experimental Data1.00055
3On Local Overidentification and Efficiency Gains in Modern Causal Inference and Data Combination0.941184
4Dynamic confounding and long-term treatment effect estimation by data combination: point and partial identification0.69351
5The Experimental Selection Correction Estimator: Using Experiments to Remove Biases in Observational Estimates0.64422
6Program Evaluation with Remotely Sensed Outcomes0.64422
7Combining Experimental and Observational Data for Identification and Estimation of Long-Term Causal Effects0.51132
8A Bracketing Relationship for Long-Term Policy Evaluation with Combined Experimental and Observational Data0.51121
9Semiparametric Estimation of Long-Term Treatment Effects$^*$0.40511
10Estimating Effects of Long-Term Treatments0.40511