Long-term causal inference under persistent confounding via data combination

• Published in: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B, Statistical methodology Vol. 87; no. 2; pp. 362 - 388
• Main Authors: Imbens, Guido, Kallus, Nathan, Mao, Xiaojie, Wang, Yuhao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Oxford University Press 01.04.2025
• Subjects: Asymptotic methods; Employment; Inference; Job training; Long term; Short term; Synthetic data
• ISSN: 1369-7412; 1467-9868
• DOI: 10.1093/jrsssb/qkae095

We study the identification and estimation of long-term treatment effects by combining short-term experimental data and long-term observational data subject to unobserved confounding. This problem arises often when concerned with long-term treatment effects since experiments are often short-term due to operational necessity while observational data can be more easily collected over longer time frames but may be subject to confounding. In this paper, we tackle the challenge of persistent confounding: unobserved confounders that can simultaneously affect the treatment, short-term outcomes, and long-term outcome. In particular, persistent confounding invalidates identification strategies in previous approaches to this problem. To address this challenge, we exploit the sequential structure of multiple short-term outcomes and develop several novel identification strategies for the average long-term treatment effect. Based on these, we develop estimation and inference methods with asymptotic guarantees. To demonstrate the importance of handling persistent confounders, we apply our methods to estimate the effect of a job training program on long-term employment using semi-synthetic data.