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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
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…
Estimates causal effects in networks with varying interference.
problem Estimating causal effects in settings with network interference.
method Proposes neighborhood adaptive estimators for average direct treatment effect on the treated.
result Establishes rates of convergence and distributional results for proposed estimators.
Proposes a novel neural network method to estimate average treatment effect.
problem Bias in estimating average treatment effect due to confounding and instrumental variables.
method Self-balancing neural network (Sbnet) that estimates pseudo propensity scores and average treatment effect in one step.
result Proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods in simulations and real-world datasets.
Estimates price sensitivity from transaction data using a novel odds ratio method.
problem Estimate price sensitivity from transaction-level data with partially observed treatment assignments.
method Recursive partitioning procedure with adversarial imputation for robust estimation.
result Validated on synthetic data and applied to three case studies, demonstrating heterogeneity in treatment effects.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
Dynamic treatment effects estimated over time using covariate balancing.
problem Estimating treatment effects in panel data with dynamic treatments.
method Dynamic covariate balancing with potential local projections.
result Established inferential guarantees for the proposed method.
This paper provides a link between causal inference and machine learning techniques - specifically, Classification and Regression Trees (CART) - in observational studies where the receipt of the treatment is not randomized, but the assignment to the treatment can be assumed to be randomized (irregular assignment mechan…
CARD detects treatment responders with machine learning and adjustment.
problem Identifying responders in non-random treatment settings.
method Conformal prediction, machine learning, propensity score adjustment.
result High power responder detection in various scenarios.
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.
Generative synthetic data can preserve predictive accuracy but distort causal inference.
problem Distortion of average treatment effect estimates in synthetic data.
method Hybrid synthetic-data framework that generates covariates while modeling treatment and outcome mechanisms separately.
result Hybrid synthesis improves causal fidelity compared to fully generative baselines.
Precision oncology, the genetic sequencing of tumors to identify druggable targets, has emerged as the standard of care in the treatment of many cancers. Nonetheless, due to the pace of therapy development and variability in patient information, designing effective protocols for individual treatment assignment in a sam…
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.
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 …
Framework for discovering treatment benefits in user segments.
problem Discovering differential impacts of treatments across user subgroups.
method Combines causal inference and machine learning for user segment discovery.
result Unified approach for treatment benefit discovery and assignment.