Semiparametric Localized Principal Stratification Analysis with Continuous Strata

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Yichi, Yang, Shu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhang, Yichi
Yang, Shu
author_facet Zhang, Yichi
Yang, Shu
contents Principal stratification is essential for revealing causal mechanisms involving post-treatment intermediate variables, in real-world applications like surrogate marker evaluation. Principal stratification analysis with continuous intermediate variables is increasingly common but challenging due to the infinite principal strata and the nonidentifiability and nonregularity of principal causal effects. Inspired by recent research, we resolve these challenges by first using a flexible copula-based principal score model to identify principal causal effect under weak principal ignorability. We then target the local functional substitute of principal causal effect, which is statistically regular and can accurately approximate principal causal effect with vanishing bandwidth. We simplify the full efficient influence function of the local functional substitute by considering its oracle-scenario alternative. This leads to a computationally efficient and straightforward estimator for the local functional substitute and principal causal effect with vanishing bandwidth. We prove the double robustness of our proposed estimator, and derive its asymptotic normality for inferential purposes. With a vanishing bandwidth, our method attains minimax optimality for the nonparametric estimation of the principal causal effect. With a fixed bandwidth, it achieves semiparametric efficiency in estimating its local functional substitute. We demonstrate the strong performance of our proposed estimator through simulations and apply it to surrogate analysis of short-term CD4 count in ACTG 175.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_13478
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Semiparametric Localized Principal Stratification Analysis with Continuous Strata
Zhang, Yichi
Yang, Shu
Methodology
Principal stratification is essential for revealing causal mechanisms involving post-treatment intermediate variables, in real-world applications like surrogate marker evaluation. Principal stratification analysis with continuous intermediate variables is increasingly common but challenging due to the infinite principal strata and the nonidentifiability and nonregularity of principal causal effects. Inspired by recent research, we resolve these challenges by first using a flexible copula-based principal score model to identify principal causal effect under weak principal ignorability. We then target the local functional substitute of principal causal effect, which is statistically regular and can accurately approximate principal causal effect with vanishing bandwidth. We simplify the full efficient influence function of the local functional substitute by considering its oracle-scenario alternative. This leads to a computationally efficient and straightforward estimator for the local functional substitute and principal causal effect with vanishing bandwidth. We prove the double robustness of our proposed estimator, and derive its asymptotic normality for inferential purposes. With a vanishing bandwidth, our method attains minimax optimality for the nonparametric estimation of the principal causal effect. With a fixed bandwidth, it achieves semiparametric efficiency in estimating its local functional substitute. We demonstrate the strong performance of our proposed estimator through simulations and apply it to surrogate analysis of short-term CD4 count in ACTG 175.
title Semiparametric Localized Principal Stratification Analysis with Continuous Strata
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.13478