Optimizing Experimental Design for Causal Effect Estimation with Partial Measurements

Abstract

Instrumental variable regression quantifies causal effects between a possibly confounded treatment variable $X_2$ and a response variable $X_3$ by leveraging an instrument $X_1$. Our work considers the setting where some prior information of the joint distribution of $X_{123}$ is given, potentially through an initial dataset. However, further samples must be gathered to improve the accuracy of the estimation. We show that under specific parameter configurations in a Gaussian graphical model, taking partial samples from, e.g., $X_{12}$ can reduce the asymptotic variance of a consistent estimator. This idea is developed by adding a budget constraint over the cost per (partial) sample. The optimization problem is analytically solvable over the real numbers and gives the optimal number of requested partial and complete samples. We provide significance level, power, and sample-size calculations for detecting a non-zero causal effect under optimal budget allocation. Our method can considerably reduce the necessary budget and the number of complete samples. Finally, we showcase the advantages and applicability of adaptive causal effect estimation for automotive analytics and pharmaceutical research.

Published at the 6th Pacific Causal Inference Conference (PCIC 2024)