arXiv:2605.21548stat.MLcs.AI2026-05被引 1

无需强假设,局部学习实现高效精准因果效应估计

Local Covariate Selection for Average Causal Effect Estimation without Pretreatment and Causal Sufficiency Assumptions

论文配图:Local Covariate Selection for Average Causal Effect Estimation without Pretreatment and Causal Sufficiency Assumptions
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 基于局部边界搜索,避开全局结构学习和强假设
  • 在多个数据集上实现准确因果估计且计算效率显著提升
  • 适合高维真实场景,无需预处理或无隐混杂假设

我们研究了无偏估计总因果效应的协变量选择问题。现有方法通常依赖于对所有变量的全局因果结构学习,或依赖于强假设如因果充分性(观测变量间无隐混杂)或预处理假设(协变量不受处理或结果影响)。这些要求在实际中往往不现实,且全局学习在高维场景下计算开销巨大。为应对挑战,我们提出一种新颖的非参数因果效应估计局部学习方法,既避免预处理假设也无需因果充分性假设。首先,我们刻画了一个局部边界,当存在有效调整集时,该边界至少包含一个;随后开发局部识别过程,在此边界内高效搜索。我们证明该方法具有完备性和正确性。在多个合成数据集和两个真实数据集上的实验表明,该方法在保持精确因果效应估计的同时,显著提升了计算效率。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

We study the problem of selecting covariates for unbiased estimation of the total causal effect.Existing approaches typically rely on global causal structure learning over all variables, or on strong assumptions such as causal sufficiency - where observed variables share no latent confounders - or the pretreatment assumption, which limits covariates to those unaffected by the treatment or outcome. These requirements are often unrealistic in practice, and global learning becomes computationally prohibitive in high-dimensional settings.To address these challenges, we propose a novel local learning method for covariate selection in nonparametric causal effect estimation that avoids both the pretreatment and causal sufficiency assumptions. We first characterize a local boundary that contains at least one valid adjustment set whenever one exists for identifying the causal effect, and then develop local identification procedures to efficiently search within this boundary.We prove that the proposed method is sound and complete. Experiments on multiple synthetic datasets and two real-world datasets show that our approach achieves accurate causal effect estimation while substantially improving computational efficiency.

因果推断协变量选择局部学习非参数

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