Iterative Identification Closure: Amplifying Causal Identifiability in Linear SEMs
Ziyi Ding, Xiao-Ping Zhang
The Half-Trek Criterion (HTC) is the primary graphical tool for determining generic identifiability of causal effect coefficients in linear structural equation models (SEMs) with latent confounders. However, HTC is inherently node-wise: it simultaneously resolves all incoming edges of a node, leaving a gap of "inconclusive" causal effects (15-23% in moderate graphs). We introduce Iterative Identification Closure (IIC), a general framework that decouples causal identification into two phases: (1) a seed function S_0 that identifies an initial set of edges from any external source of information (instrumental variables, interventions, non-Gaussianity, prior knowledge, etc.); and (2) Reduced HTC propagation that iteratively substitutes known coefficients to reduce system dimension, enabling identification of edges that standard HTC cannot resolve. The core novelty is iterative identification propagation: newly identified edges feed back to unlock further identification -- a mechanism absent from all existing graphical criteria, which treat each edge (or node) in isolation. This propagation is non-trivial: coefficient substitution alters the covariance structure, and soundness requires proving that the modified Jacobian retains generic full rank -- a new theoretical result (Reduced HTC Theorem). We prove that IIC is sound, monotone, converges in O(|E|) iterations (empirically <=2), and strictly subsumes both HTC and ancestor decomposition. Exhaustive verification on all graphs with n<=5 (134,144 edges) confirms 100% precision (zero false positives); with combined seeds, IIC reduces the HTC gap by over 80%. The propagation gain is gamma~4x (2 seeds identifying ~3% of edges to 97.5% total identification), far exceeding gamma<=1.2x of prior methods that incorporate side information without iterative feedback.
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