The paper develops methods to estimate optimal treatment sequences under policy constraints.
problem Estimating the best sequence of treatments over multiple stages for individuals.
method Empirical welfare maximization approach, solving treatment assignment sequentially or simultaneously.
result Established convergence rates and upper bounds for estimation methods.
New methods optimize personalized treatment assignment in trials with many arms.
problem Poor performance of standard methods in trials with many treatment arms.
method Regularized and clustered joint assignment forest algorithm.
result Gains in predicting arm-wise outcomes and utility gains from personalization.
Optimizes balanced treatment assignment for experiments.
problem Balancing treatment groups in experiments for optimal results.
method Optimization of a two-sample test, using minimum spanning tree test.
result Optimal assignment algorithm with polynomial time complexity.
Study compares methods for treatment assignment, finding A-learner best for playlist generation.
problem Treatment assignment in various applications.
method Three classes of algorithms: O-learner, E-learner, A-learner.
result Optimizing for outcomes or causal effects does not lead to optimal treatment assignments.
Study optimal treatment assignment policies under strategic agent responses.
problem Learning optimal treatment policies with strategic agents complicates estimation.
method Dynamic model with threshold convergence to mean-field equilibrium, consistent estimator for policy gradient.
result Threshold for treatment assignment converges to mean-field equilibrium threshold under large but finite number of agents.
Optimal treatment regimes (OTR) are individualised treatment assignment strategies that identify a medical treatment as optimal given all background information available on the individual. We discuss Bayes optimal treatment regimes estimated using a loss function defined on the bivariate distribution of dichotomous po…
The paper proposes an efficient method for estimating ATEs using adaptive experiments.
problem Estimating average treatment effects (ATEs) with minimal sample size and high accuracy.
method The paper defines and uses the efficient treatment-assignment probability to sequentially assign treatments, estimating ATEs using an Adaptive Augmented Inverse Probability Weighting (A2IPW) estimator.
result The proposed experimental design and A2IPW estimator achieve the minimized semiparametric efficiency bound and provide anytime valid confidence intervals for early stopping.
Method learns optimal treatment sequences from observational data.
problem Optimal dynamic treatment regimes for public policies and medical interventions.
method Doubly robust classification-based approach via backward induction.
result Achieves optimal convergence rate of n^(-1/2) for welfare regret.
Aims to improve personalized treatment decisions through Bayesian experimental design.
problem Evaluating and improving personalized treatment decisions in contexts like customer service.
method Model-agnostic Bayesian Experimental Design to efficiently gather data and avoid highly sub-optimal treatments.
result Our method achieves superior performance in evaluating and improving treatment decisions compared to traditional approaches.
New method improves treatment effect estimation in adaptive experiments with noncompliance.
problem Estimating average treatment effect in adaptive experiments with binary instrumental variable.
method AMRIV estimator that balances outcome noise and compliance variability.
result AMRIV achieves semiparametric efficiency bound and is robust to noncompliance.
Method learns optimal treatment policies from observational data.
problem Learning interpretable treatment assignment policies from observational data.
method Mixed-integer optimization (MIO) technology.
result Asymptotically exact in converging to optimal treatment policies.
Given two possible treatments, there may exist subgroups who benefit greater from one treatment than the other. This problem is relevant to the field of marketing, where treatments may correspond to different ways of selling a product. It is similarly relevant to the field of public policy, where treatments may corresp…
In treatment allocation problems the individuals to be treated often arrive sequentially. We study a problem in which the policy maker is not only interested in the expected cumulative welfare but is also concerned about the uncertainty/risk of the treatment outcomes. At the outset, the total number of treatment assign…
This study optimizes covariate density and propensity score for efficient ATE estimation.
problem Efficiently estimating average treatment effects (ATEs) with minimal variance.
method Adaptive experiment optimizing both covariate density and propensity score.
result Proposed method minimizes the semiparametric efficiency bound for ATE estimation.
Study tackles causal effects of close contact on MRSA infections from entangled treatment data.
problem Estimating causal effects of close contact on MRSA infections from observational data with entangled treatments.
method NEAT method that models treatment assignment mechanism and mitigates confounding biases.
result NEAT method effectively estimates causal effects from entangled treatment data.
In this paper, we study the design and analysis of experiments conducted on a set of units over multiple time periods where the starting time of the treatment may vary by unit. The design problem involves selecting an initial treatment time for each unit in order to most precisely estimate both the instantaneous and cu…
A new neural network model for optimal treatment assignment.
problem Learning optimal treatment assignment from observational data.
method Prescriptive ReLU network (P-ReLU) model that balances performance and interpretability.
result P-ReLU can be converted into an equivalent prescriptive tree with hyperplane splits for interpretability.
In many areas, practitioners seek to use observational data to learn a treatment assignment policy that satisfies application-specific constraints, such as budget, fairness, simplicity, or other functional form constraints. For example, policies may be restricted to take the form of decision trees based on a limited se…
Proposes a method to estimate personalized treatments from high-dimensional data.
problem Estimating individualized treatment regimes (ITRs) from high-dimensional covariates.
method Directly targets the contrast between potential outcomes, using dimension-reduced outcome-weighted learning.
result Achieves universal consistency, converging to the Bayes risk under mild conditions.
Counterfactual evaluation of novel treatment assignment functions (e.g., advertising algorithms and recommender systems) is one of the most crucial causal inference problems for practitioners. Traditionally, randomized controlled trials (A/B tests) are performed to evaluate treatment assignment functions. However, such…
Develops framework for estimating and improving DTRs with time-varying IV in the presence of unmeasured confounding.
problem Estimating DTRs from observational data with unmeasured confounding.
method Time-varying instrumental variable (IV) framework for estimating and improving DTRs.
result IV-optimal and IV-improved DTRs perform better than DTRs assuming no unmeasured confounding.
New method improves causal inference by estimating complex treatment effects with active learning.
problem Traditional causal inference frameworks ignore interference and assume independent treatment effects.
method Active Learning in Causal Inference with Interference (ACI) using Gaussian process and genetic algorithms.
result ACI achieves accurate effects estimation with reduced data requirements in complex interference scenarios.
We consider a multi-armed bandit problem with covariates. Given a realization of the covariate vector, instead of targeting the treatment with highest conditional expectation, the decision maker targets the treatment which maximizes a general functional of the conditional potential outcome distribution, e.g., a conditi…
Method uses semi-supervised learning to estimate optimal treatment regimes from medical records.
problem Estimating optimal treatment regimes from electronic medical records.
method Imputation-based semi-supervised method using unlabeled data.
result Proposed method yields more efficient estimators of optimal treatment regimes.
Develops methods for near-optimal personalized treatment recommendations.
problem Assigning optimal treatments to patients based on individual characteristics.
method Outcome weighted learning framework to estimate near-optimal alternative individualized treatment recommendations (A-ITR).
result Consistency of proposed methods and upper bound for risk between optimal and estimated recommendations.
Tests whether a treatment's effect is fully mediated by observed outcomes and identifies causal mechanisms.
problem Understanding how a treatment affects an outcome through intermediate variables.
method Proposes a test to evaluate full mediation and causal mechanism identification, extending to non-randomly assigned treatments.
result A conditionally random treatment is conditionally independent of the outcome given mediators and covariates if full mediation and causal mechanism identification hold.
Neural network feature optimization for causal inference.
problem Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects from data.
method Genetic algorithm optimization of intermediate neural network layers for feature representations.
result Retains useful features for outcome prediction even if related to treatment assignment.
Designs for allocating resources to prioritize needy applicants while estimating treatment effects.
problem Resource allocation under uncertainty with prioritized queues.
method Priority-queue randomization for treatment assignment and estimation of treatment effects.
result Identification of causal effects under different arrival and treatment assignment scenarios.
Study designs for estimating treatment effects in adaptive experiments.
problem Estimating treatment effects under adaptive treatment assignment.
method Propose and analyze IPW and AIPW estimators, establish CLTs under design stability.
result Central limit theorems for IPW and AIPW estimators under design stability.
Proposes rounding method for precise treatment effect estimation under budget constraints.
problem Resource-constrained experimental design for precise treatment effect estimation.
method Dependent randomized rounding procedure to convert assignment probabilities into binary treatment decisions.
result Improved estimator precision through variance reduction and efficient inference.
System interprets complex treatment effects for personalized policies.
problem Complex, hard-to-understand treatment effect models.
method Scalable, interpretable personalized experimentation system.
result Learned explanations and generated interpretable policies.
Demand response is designed to motivate electricity customers to modify their loads at critical time periods. The accurate estimation of impact of demand response signals to customers' consumption is central to any successful program. In practice, learning these response is nontrivial because operators can only send a …
DONUT improves treatment effect estimation by enforcing orthogonality constraints.
problem Estimating treatment effects from observational data is challenging due to unobserved outcomes.
method DONUT uses a regularization framework that formalizes unconfoundedness as orthogonality, leading to deep orthogonal networks.
result DONUT outperforms state-of-the-art methods in estimating average treatment effects.
Proposes a method to stabilize treatment effect estimation with unbalanced data.
problem Unbalanced treatment assignment leading to unstable propensity score estimations.
method Undersamples data for propensity score modeling and calibrates scores to match original distribution.
result The estimator retains asymptotic properties of the DML estimator and improves finite sample performance.
A new method improves efficiency in finding optimal personalized treatment rules.
problem Heteroscedasticity and misspecified treatment-free effect models affect optimal ITR estimation.
method E-Learning framework that accounts for covariate-treatment dependent variance of residuals.
result E-Learning framework improves efficiency of optimal ITR estimation.
There is a fast-growing literature on estimating optimal treatment regimes based on randomized trials or observational studies under a key identifying condition of no unmeasured confounding. Because confounding by unmeasured factors cannot generally be ruled out with certainty in observational studies or randomized tri…
CRN model estimates treatment effects over time using adversarial balancing.
problem Estimating treatment effects over time in medical settings.
method Adversarial domain balancing to remove time-varying confounders.
result CRN achieves lower error in estimating counterfactuals and treatment timing.
Paper tackles inconsistent CATE estimation across group assignments.
problem Inconsistent learning behavior for the same instance across different group assignments.
method CLAGA method to eliminate inconsistency.
result Significant performance improvements with CLAGA method.
New method estimates individual treatment effects using domain generalization.
problem Estimating causal individual treatment effects from observational data with treatment bias.
method Invariant Risk Minimization (IRM) framework to learn predictors invariant to domain-dependent factors.
result IRM-based ITE estimator shows gains over classical regression approaches in settings with pronounced support mismatch.
Study optimizes experimental design for best treatment arm identification.
problem Identifying the best treatment arm given contextual information.
method Adaptive Sampling-Policy Learning (PLAS) strategy for minimax rate optimality.
result PLAS strategy achieves minimax rate optimality in expected simple regret.
New method estimates treatment effects over time with unobserved confounders.
problem Estimating treatment effects from observational data with unobserved confounders.
method Sequential Deconfounder using Gaussian process latent variable model.
result Unbiased estimates of individualized treatment responses over time.
The personalization of treatment via bio-markers and other risk categories has drawn increasing interest among clinical scientists. Personalized treatment strategies can be learned using data from clinical trials, but such trials are very costly to run. This paper explores the use of active learning techniques to desig…
Proposes a deep spectral Q-learning for mobile health data.
problem Personalized treatment assignment for patients with time-varying covariates.
method Integrates PCA with deep Q-learning for mixed frequency data.
result Mean return converges to optimal under estimated optimal policy.
Estimates treatment effects in randomized experiments with non-compliance.
problem Estimating distributional treatment effects in experiments with imperfect compliance.
method Proposes a regression-adjusted estimator based on distribution regression with Neyman-orthogonal moment conditions.
result Achieves semiparametric efficiency bound and demonstrates favorable performance in simulations and real data.
We consider the problem of how to assign treatment in a randomized experiment, in which the correlation among the outcomes is informed by a network available pre-intervention. Working within the potential outcome causal framework, we develop a class of models that posit such a correlation structure among the outcomes. …
The estimation of treatment effects is a pervasive problem in medicine. Existing methods for estimating treatment effects from longitudinal observational data assume that there are no hidden confounders, an assumption that is not testable in practice and, if it does not hold, leads to biased estimates. In this paper, w…
A new method estimates treatment effects without strong assumptions.
problem Treatment effect estimation with strong model assumptions.
method Distribution learning-based weighting method.
result Our method outperforms existing methods in estimating ATT.
New method combines randomization tests and flexible models for valid inference without splitting data.
problem Valid inference in randomized panel experiments with complex effect heterogeneity.
method Model-assisted randomization tests that estimate unsigned CATE from residualized outcomes.
result CATE-assisted tests control Type I error and achieve higher power than alternatives.