Haotian Sun

Spectral Representation for Causal Estimation with Hidden Confounders

Haotian Sun
Antoine Moulin
Tongzheng Ren
Arthur Gretton
Bo Dai
Accepted at AISTATS'25,

Abstract

We propose a method for causal effect estimation in settings with hidden confounders, via spectral representations derived from proxy variables. By formulating the problem in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space and leveraging operator-theoretic tools, we derive tractable estimators that recover causal effects without requiring direct access to the confounder. Our approach generalizes instrumental variable and proxy-based methods, and we demonstrate both theoretical guarantees and strong empirical performance across synthetic and real-world benchmarks.

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BibTeX

			
@inproceedings{sun2025spectral,
    title={Spectral Representation for Causal Estimation with Hidden Confounders},
    author={Haotian Sun and Antoine Moulin and Tongzheng Ren and Arthur Gretton and Bo Dai},
    booktitle={International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS)},
    year={2025}
}