Disentangled Representation Learning for Causal Inference with Instruments

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Cheng, Debo, Li, Jiuyong, Liu, Lin, Xu, Ziqi, Zhang, Weijia, Liu, Jixue, Le, Thuc Duy
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Cheng, Debo
Li, Jiuyong
Liu, Lin
Xu, Ziqi
Zhang, Weijia
Liu, Jixue
Le, Thuc Duy
author_facet Cheng, Debo
Li, Jiuyong
Liu, Lin
Xu, Ziqi
Zhang, Weijia
Liu, Jixue
Le, Thuc Duy
contents Latent confounders are a fundamental challenge for inferring causal effects from observational data. The instrumental variable (IV) approach is a practical way to address this challenge. Existing IV based estimators need a known IV or other strong assumptions, such as the existence of two or more IVs in the system, which limits the application of the IV approach. In this paper, we consider a relaxed requirement, which assumes there is an IV proxy in the system without knowing which variable is the proxy. We propose a Variational AutoEncoder (VAE) based disentangled representation learning method to learn an IV representation from a dataset with latent confounders and then utilise the IV representation to obtain an unbiased estimation of the causal effect from the data. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world data have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing IV based estimators and VAE-based estimators.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_04641
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Disentangled Representation Learning for Causal Inference with Instruments
Cheng, Debo
Li, Jiuyong
Liu, Lin
Xu, Ziqi
Zhang, Weijia
Liu, Jixue
Le, Thuc Duy
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Latent confounders are a fundamental challenge for inferring causal effects from observational data. The instrumental variable (IV) approach is a practical way to address this challenge. Existing IV based estimators need a known IV or other strong assumptions, such as the existence of two or more IVs in the system, which limits the application of the IV approach. In this paper, we consider a relaxed requirement, which assumes there is an IV proxy in the system without knowing which variable is the proxy. We propose a Variational AutoEncoder (VAE) based disentangled representation learning method to learn an IV representation from a dataset with latent confounders and then utilise the IV representation to obtain an unbiased estimation of the causal effect from the data. Extensive experiments on synthetic and real-world data have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing IV based estimators and VAE-based estimators.
title Disentangled Representation Learning for Causal Inference with Instruments
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04641