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A Sensitivity Analysis of the Surrogate Index Approach for Estimating Long-Term Treatment Effects

Yanqin Fan, Carlos A. Manzanares, Hyeonseok Park, Yuan Qi

arXiv 28 Feb 2026 · Econometrics

arXiv:2603.00580 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

This paper develops a sensitivity analysis of the surrogacy assumption for the surrogate index approach in Athey et al. [2025b]. We introduce "Weighted Surrogate Indices (WSIs)," the analog of the surrogate index under the surrogacy assumption. We show that under comparability, the ATE on WSI identifies the ATE on the long-term outcome when a copula of the treatment and the long-term outcome conditional on baseline covariates and surrogates is known. When the copula is unknown, we establish the identified set of the ATE on the long-term outcome. Furthermore, we construct debiased estimators of the ATE for any given copula and develop asymptotically valid inference in both point-identified and partially identified cases. Using data from a poverty alleviation program in Pakistan, we demonstrate the importance of sensitivity checks as well as the usefulness of our approach.

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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
1Susan Athey, Raj Chetty, Guido W Imbens, and Hyunseung Kang (2025) The Surrogate Index: Combining Short-Term Proxies to Estimate Long-Term Treatment Effects more Rapidly and Precisely0.98341795%
2Jiafeng Chen and David M. Ritzwoller (2023) Semiparametric estimation of long-term treatment effects0.96510390%
3Jacob Dorn, Kevin Guo, and Nathan Kallus (2024) Doubly-Valid/Doubly-Sharp Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Inference with Unmeasured Confounding0.8229356%
4Victor Chernozhukov, Denis Chetverikov, Mert Demirer, Esther Duflo,… (2018) Double/debiased machine learning for treatment and structural parameters0.76318444%
5Alois Pichler (2013) Premiums and reserves, adjusted by distortions0.7373367%
6Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Nathanael Goldberg, Dean Karlan, Rob… (2015) A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor: Evidence from six countries0.73732100%
7Vira Semenova (2025) Generalized Lee bounds0.73732100%
8Stamatis Cambanis, Gordon Simons, and William Stout (1976) Inequalities for E k(X, Y) when the marginals are fixed0.64422100%
9Jeremy Yang, Dean Eckles, Paramveer Dhillon, and Sinan Aral (2023) Targeting for Long-Term Outcomes0.64422100%
10Tomasz Olma (2021) Nonparametric Estimation of Truncated Conditional Expectation Functions, September 20210.5114225%

Showing the top 10 of 31 scored citations.