用神经均值嵌入构建双稳健代理因果模型,提升连续治疗的因果效应估计精度。
Doubly Robust Proxy Causal Learning with Neural Mean Embeddings
- 引入神经均值嵌入建模处理桥接函数,结合结果桥接实现双稳健估计。
- 在合成与图像数据上优于现有基线,尤其在连续治疗场景下表现更优。
- 适合需要高精度因果推断的医疗、经济等复杂领域研究者使用。
未观测混杂因素阻碍了观察性研究中因果响应函数的标准协变量调整识别。代理因果学习通过涉及处理和结果诱导代理变量的桥接方程解决此问题,避免直接恢复潜在混杂因子。现有的双稳健代理估计器结合了结果与处理桥接,但通常依赖固定核、筛法或低维半参数模型;现有神经代理方法更灵活,但多为单桥估计器。本文提出一种基于神经均值嵌入的连续及结构化处理的双稳健代理因果学习框架。该方法引入神经均值嵌入估计器来建模处理桥接,与神经结果桥接结合,并通过最终回归阶段估计双稳健修正项。该框架涵盖总体、异质性和条件剂量-反应函数,生成完整响应曲线而非二值处理效应。算法对每个桥接采用两阶段设计,并通过历史感知更新最终线性层以稳定随机多阶段训练。我们证明了算法的一致性,表明双稳健误差由最终平均与回归误差,以及结果侧与处理侧弱范数桥接误差中的较小者共同控制。在合成与图像基准测试中,所提估计器优于现有基线与单桥神经估计器,验证了在双稳健构造中联合学习结果与处理桥接的优势。代码已公开于 https://github.com/BariscanBozkurt/DRPCL-Neural-Mean-Embedding。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Unobserved confounding prevents standard covariate adjustment from identifying causal response functions in observational studies. Proxy causal learning addresses this problem through bridge equations involving treatment- and outcome-inducing proxies, avoiding direct recovery of the latent confounder. Existing doubly robust proxy estimators combine outcome and treatment bridges, but typically rely on fixed kernels, sieves, or low-dimensional semiparametric models; existing neural proxy methods are more flexible, but are largely single-bridge estimators. We develop a neural doubly robust framework for proxy causal learning with continuous and structured treatments. Our method introduces a neural mean-embedding estimator for the treatment bridge, combines it with a neural outcome bridge, and estimates the doubly robust correction through a final regression stage. The framework covers population, heterogeneous, and conditional dose-response functions, yielding full response-curve estimators rather than binary-treatment effects. The algorithms use two stages for each bridge and history-aware updates of the final linear layers to stabilize stochastic multi-stage training. We prove consistency of the algorithms showing that the doubly robust error is controlled by the final averaging and regression errors together with the smaller of the outcome- and treatment-side weak-norm bridge errors. Across synthetic and image-valued benchmarks, the proposed estimators outperform existing baselines and single-bridge neural estimators, showing the benefit of combining learned outcome and treatment bridges in a doubly robust construction. Our implementation is available at https://github.com/BariscanBozkurt/DRPCL-Neural-Mean-Embedding.
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