Data-Driven and Cycle-Agnostic Covariate Selection for Nonparametric Causal Effect Estimation
Ana Leticia Garcez Vicente, Gijs van Seeventer, Saber Salehkaleybar
Estimating causal effects from observational data requires identifying valid adjustment sets. This task is especially challenging in realistic settings where latent confounding and feedback loops are present. Existing approaches typically assume acyclicity or rely on global causal structure learning, limiting applicability and computational efficiency. In this work, we study a local, data-driven method for covariate selection based on conditional independence information under a pre-treatment assumption. While this method is known to be sound and complete in acyclic causal models, its validity in the presence of cycles has remained unclear. Our main contribution is to show that these guarantees extend to cyclic causal models. In particular, our result relies on the invariance of conditional independence assertions under $σ$-acyclification. These findings establish a unified, cycle-agnostic perspective on covariate selection, which allows for causal effect estimation using any consistent estimator. Therefore, showing that the method applies across cyclic and acyclic settings without modification. Empirically, we validate this on extensive synthetic data, showing reliable performance in cyclic causal models.
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