Estimating the average causal effect of intervention in continuous variables using machine learning
This work addresses a gap in causal inference for continuous treatments, offering a method that is independent of specific machine learning algorithms and preserves identifiability.
The authors tackled the problem of estimating average causal effects for interventions on continuous variables, which lacked model-independent methods, and proposed a general approach applicable to any identifiable data generating model.
The most widely discussed methods for estimating the Average Causal Effect/Average Treatment Effect are those for intervention in discrete binary variables whose value represents intervention/non-intervention groups. On the other hand, methods for intervening in continuous variables independent of data generating models have not been developed. In this study, we give a method for estimating the average causal effect for intervention in continuous variables that can be applied to data of any generating models as long as the causal effect is identifiable. The proposing method is independent of machine learning algorithms and preserves the identifiability of data.