Analysis of the Binary Instrumental Variable Model
Thomas S. Richardson, James M. Robins · 2010
We give an explicit geometric characterization of the set of distributions over counterfactuals that are compatible with a given observed joint distribution fortheobservablesinthebinary instrumental variable model. This paper will appear as Chapter 25 in Heuristics, Probability and Causality: A Tribute to Pearl’s seminal work on instrumental variables [Chickering andPearl1996;BalkeandPearl 1997] for discrete data represented a leap forwards in terms of understanding: Pearl showed that, contrary to what many had supposed based on linear models, in the discrete case the assumption that a variable was an instrument could be subjected to empirical test. In