Substitute adjustment via recovery of latent variables

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Adams, Jeffrey, Hansen, Niels Richard
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Adams, Jeffrey
Hansen, Niels Richard
author_facet Adams, Jeffrey
Hansen, Niels Richard
contents The deconfounder was proposed as a method for estimating causal parameters in a context with multiple causes and unobserved confounding. It is based on recovery of a latent variable from the observed causes. We disentangle the causal interpretation from the statistical estimation problem and show that the deconfounder in general estimates adjusted regression target parameters. It does so by outcome regression adjusted for the recovered latent variable termed the substitute. We refer to the general algorithm, stripped of causal assumptions, as substitute adjustment. We give theoretical results to support that substitute adjustment estimates adjusted regression parameters when the regressors are conditionally independent given the latent variable. We also introduce a variant of our substitute adjustment algorithm that estimates an assumption-lean target parameter with minimal model assumptions. We then give finite sample bounds and asymptotic results supporting substitute adjustment estimation in the case where the latent variable takes values in a finite set. A simulation study illustrates finite sample properties of substitute adjustment. Our results support that when the latent variable model of the regressors hold, substitute adjustment is a viable method for adjusted regression.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_00202
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Substitute adjustment via recovery of latent variables
Adams, Jeffrey
Hansen, Niels Richard
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
The deconfounder was proposed as a method for estimating causal parameters in a context with multiple causes and unobserved confounding. It is based on recovery of a latent variable from the observed causes. We disentangle the causal interpretation from the statistical estimation problem and show that the deconfounder in general estimates adjusted regression target parameters. It does so by outcome regression adjusted for the recovered latent variable termed the substitute. We refer to the general algorithm, stripped of causal assumptions, as substitute adjustment. We give theoretical results to support that substitute adjustment estimates adjusted regression parameters when the regressors are conditionally independent given the latent variable. We also introduce a variant of our substitute adjustment algorithm that estimates an assumption-lean target parameter with minimal model assumptions. We then give finite sample bounds and asymptotic results supporting substitute adjustment estimation in the case where the latent variable takes values in a finite set. A simulation study illustrates finite sample properties of substitute adjustment. Our results support that when the latent variable model of the regressors hold, substitute adjustment is a viable method for adjusted regression.
title Substitute adjustment via recovery of latent variables
topic Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00202