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Autori principali: Xie, Yifei, Huang, Jian
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05890
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author Xie, Yifei
Huang, Jian
author_facet Xie, Yifei
Huang, Jian
contents Estimating causal effects from observational data has become increasingly critical in diverse fields including healthcare, economics, and social policy. The fundamental challenge in causal inference arises from the missing counterfactuals and the selection bias. Existing methods are largely limited to point estimates and lack the capacity for distribution modeling. In this work, we propose RepFlow, a novel framework that formulates causal effect estimation as a joint optimization problem integrating representation learning with Conditional Flow Matching (CFM). RepFlow mitigates selection bias by minimizing the entropically regularized Wasserstein distance between treated and control representations. To enhance numerical stability, we further introduce an $L_2$ normalization constraint on latent representations. This balanced representation enables the flow model to accurately capture the distribution of potential outcomes. Extensive experiments across a wide range of benchmarks demonstrate that RepFlow consistently outperforms existing methods in both point and distributional causal effect estimation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_05890
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RepFlow: Representation Enhanced Flow Matching for Causal Effect Estimation
Xie, Yifei
Huang, Jian
Machine Learning
Methodology
Estimating causal effects from observational data has become increasingly critical in diverse fields including healthcare, economics, and social policy. The fundamental challenge in causal inference arises from the missing counterfactuals and the selection bias. Existing methods are largely limited to point estimates and lack the capacity for distribution modeling. In this work, we propose RepFlow, a novel framework that formulates causal effect estimation as a joint optimization problem integrating representation learning with Conditional Flow Matching (CFM). RepFlow mitigates selection bias by minimizing the entropically regularized Wasserstein distance between treated and control representations. To enhance numerical stability, we further introduce an $L_2$ normalization constraint on latent representations. This balanced representation enables the flow model to accurately capture the distribution of potential outcomes. Extensive experiments across a wide range of benchmarks demonstrate that RepFlow consistently outperforms existing methods in both point and distributional causal effect estimation.
title RepFlow: Representation Enhanced Flow Matching for Causal Effect Estimation
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05890