Causality Program Visitor Speaker Series - Generalized Instrumental Inequalities: Complexity, Sharpness, Robustness

Abstract: I will discuss a general class of testable implications for the instrumental variable models, when the treatment is discrete, but outcome and instruments are unrestricted: generalized instrumental inequalities (GIV). This class generalized the Pearl instrumental inequalities. I will discuss the complexity of proving sharpness of  the GIV when the support of the outcome is large. Discuss the importance of sharpness results for a correct interpretation of the bounds on the average causal effect under the IV model. This discussion will be mainly  a follow up of Thomas Richardson lectures  on the IV during our first workshop.