Double Machine Learning of Continuous Treatment Effects with General Instrumental Variables

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2601.01471v1
• Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2026 10:29:53 GMT
• Title: Double Machine Learning of Continuous Treatment Effects with General Instrumental Variables
• Authors: Shuyuan Chen, Peng Zhang, Yifan Cui,
• Abstract summary: Estimating causal effects of continuous treatments is a common problem in practice.<n>We propose a novel framework for local identification of dose-response functions using instrumental variables.
• Score: 5.00731378650601
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Estimating causal effects of continuous treatments is a common problem in practice, for example, in studying dose-response functions. Classical analyses typically assume that all confounders are fully observed, whereas in real-world applications, unmeasured confounding often persists. In this article, we propose a novel framework for local identification of dose-response functions using instrumental variables, thereby mitigating bias induced by unobserved confounders. We introduce the concept of a uniform regular weighting function and consider covering the treatment space with a finite collection of open sets. On each of these sets, such a weighting function exists, allowing us to identify the dose-response function locally within the corresponding region. For estimation, we develop an augmented inverse probability weighting score for continuous treatments under a debiased machine learning framework with instrumental variables. We further establish the asymptotic properties when the dose-response function is estimated via kernel regression or empirical risk minimization. Finally, we conduct both simulation and empirical studies to assess the finite-sample performance of the proposed methods.

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