Causal Inference Under Approximate Neighborhood Interference

DOI10.3982/ECTA17841zbMATH Open1492.91247arXiv1911.07085OpenAlexW3124060036WikidataQ130420717 ScholiaQ130420717MaRDI QIDQ5087293FDOQ5087293

Michael P. Leung

Publication date: 11 July 2022

Published in: Econometrica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: This paper studies causal inference in randomized experiments under network interference. Commonly used models of interference posit that treatments assigned to alters beyond a certain network distance from the ego have no effect on the ego's response. However, this assumption is violated in common models of social interactions. We propose a substantially weaker model of "approximate neighborhood interference" (ANI) under which treatments assigned to alters further from the ego have a smaller, but potentially nonzero, effect on the ego's response. We formally verify that ANI holds for well-known models of social interactions. Under ANI, restrictions on the network topology, and asymptotics under which the network size increases, we prove that standard inverse-probability weighting estimators consistently estimate useful exposure effects and are approximately normal. For inference, we consider a network HAC variance estimator. Under a finite population model, we show that the estimator is biased but that the bias can be interpreted as the variance of unit-level exposure effects. This generalizes Neyman's well-known result on conservative variance estimation to settings with interference.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.07085

zbMATH Keywords

causal inferencesocial networksnetwork interference

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Social networks; opinion dynamics (91D30)

Cited In (10)

• Rate-optimal cluster-randomized designs for spatial interference
• Learning Neighborhoods of High Confidence in Constraint-Based Causal Discovery
• Population interference in panel experiments
• Estimating a Continuous Treatment Model with Spillovers: A Control Function Approach
• Causal Inference with Noncompliance and Unknown Interference
• New Estimands for Experiments with Strong Interference
• Causal Inference on Discrete Data via Estimating Distance Correlations
• Balancing Covariates in Randomized Experiments with the Gram–Schmidt Walk Design
• Network cluster-robust inference
• Randomization tests for peer effects in group formation experiments

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