Disentangled Instrumental Variables for Causal Inference with Networked Observational Data
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866915784395063296 |
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| author | Huang, Zhirong Cheng, Debo Zhang, Guixian Wang, Yi Li, Jiuyong Zhang, Shichao |
| author_facet | Huang, Zhirong Cheng, Debo Zhang, Guixian Wang, Yi Li, Jiuyong Zhang, Shichao |
| contents | Instrumental variables (IVs) are crucial for addressing unobservable confounders, yet their stringent exogeneity assumptions pose significant challenges in networked data. Existing methods typically rely on modelling neighbour information when recovering IVs, thereby inevitably mixing shared environment-induced endogenous correlations and individual-specific exogenous variation, leading the resulting IVs to inherit dependence on unobserved confounders and to violate exogeneity. To overcome this challenge, we propose $\underline{Dis}$entangled $\underline{I}$nstrumental $\underline{V}$ariables (DisIV) framework, a novel method for causal inference based on networked observational data with latent confounders. DisIV exploits network homogeneity as an inductive bias and employs a structural disentanglement mechanism to extract individual-specific components that serve as latent IVs. The causal validity of the extracted IVs is constrained through explicit orthogonality and exclusion conditions. Extensive semi-synthetic experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that DisIV consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in causal effect estimation under network-induced confounding. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_07765 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Disentangled Instrumental Variables for Causal Inference with Networked Observational Data Huang, Zhirong Cheng, Debo Zhang, Guixian Wang, Yi Li, Jiuyong Zhang, Shichao Artificial Intelligence Instrumental variables (IVs) are crucial for addressing unobservable confounders, yet their stringent exogeneity assumptions pose significant challenges in networked data. Existing methods typically rely on modelling neighbour information when recovering IVs, thereby inevitably mixing shared environment-induced endogenous correlations and individual-specific exogenous variation, leading the resulting IVs to inherit dependence on unobserved confounders and to violate exogeneity. To overcome this challenge, we propose $\underline{Dis}$entangled $\underline{I}$nstrumental $\underline{V}$ariables (DisIV) framework, a novel method for causal inference based on networked observational data with latent confounders. DisIV exploits network homogeneity as an inductive bias and employs a structural disentanglement mechanism to extract individual-specific components that serve as latent IVs. The causal validity of the extracted IVs is constrained through explicit orthogonality and exclusion conditions. Extensive semi-synthetic experiments on real-world datasets demonstrate that DisIV consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in causal effect estimation under network-induced confounding. |
| title | Disentangled Instrumental Variables for Causal Inference with Networked Observational Data |
| topic | Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07765 |