Self-Normalizing Denominators in Rational Causal Estimation

Published
Source
arXiv
Paper number
966
Field
Research
arXiv ID
2608.20223

Key points

  • It defined a 'self-normalizing' class of causal-estimation denominators whose standardized values are constant across samples, and proved that such denominators cannot have weak-identification first-order limits.
  • It showed that products of powers of nested covariance minors have this property in every dimension and permit exact Wishart pivots.
  • The converse classification is complete in dimension 2, and in dimension 3 it proposed a factor-rank criterion covering instrumental-variable, front-door, and proxy formulas.
  • It proved that Wald inference for front-door adjustment remains asymptotically valid even when the residual variance of the mediating variable vanishes.
  • An audit of real medical data (right-heart catheterization) showed that 'naive diagnostics' and 'denominator-related diagnostics' lead to different conclusions.

Paper links

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