scholarly journals Causal Inference With Two Versions of Treatment

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-445
Author(s):  
Raiden B. Hasegawa ◽  
Sameer K. Deshpande ◽  
Dylan S. Small ◽  
Paul R. Rosenbaum

Causal effects are commonly defined as comparisons of the potential outcomes under treatment and control, but this definition is threatened by the possibility that either the treatment or the control condition is not well defined, existing instead in more than one version. This is often a real possibility in nonexperimental or observational studies of treatments because these treatments occur in the natural or social world without the laboratory control needed to ensure identically the same treatment or control condition occurs in every instance. We consider the simplest case: Either the treatment condition or the control condition exists in two versions that are easily recognized in the data but are of uncertain, perhaps doubtful, relevance, for example, branded Advil versus generic ibuprofen. Common practice does not address versions of treatment: Typically, the issue is either ignored or explicitly stated but assumed to be absent. Common practice is reluctant to address two versions of treatment because the obvious solution entails dividing the data into two parts with two analyses, thereby (a) reducing power to detect versions of treatment in each part, (b) creating problems of multiple inference in coordinating the two analyses, and (c) failing to report a single primary analysis that uses everyone. We propose and illustrate a new method of analysis that begins with a single primary analysis of everyone that would be correct if the two versions do not differ, adds a second analysis that would be correct were there two different effects for the two versions, controls the family-wise error rate in all assertions made by the several analyses, and yet pays no price in power to detect a constant treatment effect in the primary analysis of everyone. Our method can be applied to analyses of constant additive treatment effects on continuous outcomes. Unlike conventional simultaneous inferences, the new method is coordinating several analyses that are valid under different assumptions, so that one analysis would never be performed if one knew for certain that the assumptions of the other analysis are true. It is a multiple assumptions problem rather than a multiple hypotheses problem. We discuss the relative merits of the method with respect to more conventional approaches to analyzing multiple comparisons. The method is motivated and illustrated using a study of the possibility that repeated head trauma in high school football causes an increase in risk of early onset cognitive decline.

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Hainmueller

This paper proposes entropy balancing, a data preprocessing method to achieve covariate balance in observational studies with binary treatments. Entropy balancing relies on a maximum entropy reweighting scheme that calibrates unit weights so that the reweighted treatment and control group satisfy a potentially large set of prespecified balance conditions that incorporate information about known sample moments. Entropy balancing thereby exactly adjusts inequalities in representation with respect to the first, second, and possibly higher moments of the covariate distributions. These balance improvements can reduce model dependence for the subsequent estimation of treatment effects. The method assures that balance improves on all covariate moments included in the reweighting. It also obviates the need for continual balance checking and iterative searching over propensity score models that may stochastically balance the covariate moments. We demonstrate the use of entropy balancing with Monte Carlo simulations and empirical applications.


Author(s):  
Asha Bajpai

Custody refers to the physical care and control of a minor whereas guardianship is a wider term and includes rights and duties with respect to the care and control of minor’s person and property, and includes the right to make decisions relating to the minor. The present legal regime relating to guardianship and custody of children is discussed, including the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, 1956, the personal and matrimonial laws, and relevant provisions in the Family Courts Act and Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act, 2005. The emerging concepts of shared parenting, joint custody, and the interparental child removal or abduction of child is included. There is review and analysis of some major reported judicial decisions. A comparative survey of international laws and trends has been done. Suggestions for law reform in the best interest of the child have been given.


Author(s):  
Chang Yu ◽  
Daniel Zelterman

Abstract We develop the distribution for the number of hypotheses found to be statistically significant using the rule from Simes (Biometrika 73: 751–754, 1986) for controlling the family-wise error rate (FWER). We find the distribution of the number of statistically significant p-values under the null hypothesis and show this follows a normal distribution under the alternative. We propose a parametric distribution ΨI(·) to model the marginal distribution of p-values sampled from a mixture of null uniform and non-uniform distributions under different alternative hypotheses. The ΨI distribution is useful when there are many different alternative hypotheses and these are not individually well understood. We fit ΨI to data from three cancer studies and use it to illustrate the distribution of the number of notable hypotheses observed in these examples. We model dependence in sampled p-values using a latent variable. These methods can be combined to illustrate a power analysis in planning a larger study on the basis of a smaller pilot experiment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-441
Author(s):  
Francisco Neptalí Morales-Serna ◽  
Juan Manuel Martínez-Brown ◽  
Rosa Maria Medina-Guerrero ◽  
Emma Josefina Fajer-Ávila

Parasitic copepods of the family Caligidae, the so-called sea lice, may be deleterious to marine or brackish finfish aquaculture. To date, biological and ecological studies of sea lice have been mostly restricted to species from cold or temperate regions. In Mexico there are some records of sea lice species on marine fishes; however, the research regarding their biology and ecology has been scarce. It is possible that a high biodiversity of sea lice is distributed in coastal waters of Mexico; therefore, their significance as pathogenic parasites should increase. The purpose of this review is to outline the current knowledge of the life cycle, host location, ecology, effect on fish health, and control strategies of sea lice in order to establish supportive basis for natural resource management and control of parasites and diseases of marine fish cultured in Mexico.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 934-949
Author(s):  
Husna Siraji Nyambia ◽  
Hamdino Hamdan

Purpose This study extensively aims to investigate the effects of different aspects of corporate governance (CG) mechanism, including board size, executive directors’ shareholdings, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) duality, a family member as the CEO and/or chairperson of the board, independent directors in remuneration committee and number of board meeting, on executive directors’ remuneration in small firms listed on Bursa Malaysia (BM). Design/methodology/approach The sample of this study consists of 173 bottom-listed companies from Bursa Malaysia in Year 2010. The Year 2010 was chosen because the disclosure of remuneration committee activities and directors’ pay structure is required under the revised Malaysia Code of Corporate Governance, 2007. Furthermore, the period selected is after the global economic crisis (2008), which may have an effect on the remuneration structure in small firms. The ordinary least squares regression was used to estimate the relationship between remuneration as dependent variable and other independent variables. Findings A finding from this study reveals that there is a significant positive relationship between executive ownership and executive remuneration, and between board size and executive remuneration. The results provide evidence that the family members manipulate power and control remuneration in small firms. This indicates that the independent directors are not truly independent to monitor and control the firm activities, including minimizing the excessive remuneration. Research limitations/implications This study examines how the corporate governance (CG) affects remuneration among 173 small firms in Malaysia based on market capitalization, for one year, 2010. Hence, the results may not be generalizable to other periods or types of the companies. This shows the possibility of the absence of some additional variables in the research model and hence a limitation to the findings of the study. Although the study is being parsimonious in the choice of relevant variables, prior literature serves the guide in the selection of the used variables. This therefore gives room for future research using the potential omitted variables. Furthermore, the study focuses on total remuneration, such as fees, salaries, bonuses and benefits in kind, which makes aggregate directors’ remuneration. However, this study did not consider the remuneration related to stock options. Finally, this study only uses secondary data; hence, it could be interesting to use other instruments to collect data like a questionnaire to add more weight to the research. This study only uses one-year data; therefore, impact of changes between years cannot be analysed. Originality/value Results of the study provide evidence that the family members manipulate power and control remuneration in small firms. They reduce the effectiveness of non-executive directors because most of them are appointed by a family member and not socially responsible to their stakeholders.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 709-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann Frank ◽  
Alexander Kessler ◽  
Thomas Rusch ◽  
Julia Suess–Reyes ◽  
Daniela Weismeier–Sammer

This article develops a familiness scale measuring the family influence on the business via decision premises that express familiness. In three studies, we examine familiness with qualitative and quantitative approaches based on new systems theory. Narrative interviews are employed to generate items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses led to a multidimensional scale (Family Influence Familiness Scale [FIFS]) comprising six dimensions: (1) ownership, management, and control; (2) proficiency level of active family members; (3) sharing of information between active family members; (4) transgenerational orientation; (5) family–employee bond; and (6) family business identity. Results indicate high reliability and validity levels.


2016 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 32-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Stange ◽  
Thorsten Dickhaus ◽  
Arcadi Navarro ◽  
Daniel Schunk

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 101-104
Author(s):  
Pilar Dominguez-Martinez

The indebtedness of Spanish households coupled with a marital crisis, requires finding solutions to combine the protection of family interests, mainly of children, housing needs of society and the satisfaction of the creditor's right to credit mortgage crisis when the family faces the mortgage payment that affects the family housing. Also, new laws on regional express recognition of the custody and control of the destiny of the family housing in cases of divorce and separation through formulas such as the sale of the house, let consider the use of dation in payment of the family housing as a way to avoid foreclosure in cases of marital crisis in the context of current economic crisis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-210
Author(s):  
Arvid Sjölander ◽  
Ola Hössjer

Abstract Unmeasured confounding is an important threat to the validity of observational studies. A common way to deal with unmeasured confounding is to compute bounds for the causal effect of interest, that is, a range of values that is guaranteed to include the true effect, given the observed data. Recently, bounds have been proposed that are based on sensitivity parameters, which quantify the degree of unmeasured confounding on the risk ratio scale. These bounds can be used to compute an E-value, that is, the degree of confounding required to explain away an observed association, on the risk ratio scale. We complement and extend this previous work by deriving analogous bounds, based on sensitivity parameters on the risk difference scale. We show that our bounds can also be used to compute an E-value, on the risk difference scale. We compare our novel bounds with previous bounds through a real data example and a simulation study.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianliang Sun ◽  
Mingze Yan ◽  
Mingyuan Li ◽  
Tongtong Hao

Abstract The flatness target curve is important in the flatness control theory. The accuracy of flatness target curve is an important factor to determine the load of flatness control means and flatness quality. Aiming at the defect that crown of each pass after rolling cannot be controlled quantitatively in the traditional target curve formulation of cold rolling, a new method considering the target crown was proposed. Specifically, the target crown of each pass can be set by combining the total proportional crown change in hot rolling field to each pass and the instability discrimination model in cold rolling field. the total proportional crown change of incoming material and finished product is allocated to each pass, and the instability discrimination model is applied to ensure the stability of the plate. The purpose of new method is to control of the crown of each pass quantitatively, so that the flatness and thickness of plate can meet the production requirements. Taking SUNDWIG 20-high mill and typical rolling products as an example, the simulation results show that, on the basis of ensuring the flatness and obtaining the minimum available crown after rolling, the model can make the flatness and crown meet the production requirements at the same time and control the crown of each pass after rolling quantitatively by setting the target crown of each pass.


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