2014/05/16 by Zhichao Jiang, Peng Ding, Jiang, Zhichao +3
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Mathematics · Social Sciences · #Advanced Causal Inference Techniques #FOS: Mathematics #Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life #Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research #Statistics Theory (math.ST) #math.ST #stat.TH
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1405.4258
Statistica Sinica 2014
arxiv created 2014/05/16 · openalex publication_date 2014/05/16 · arxiv updated 2014/05/19 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We say that the signs of association measures among three variables X, Y, Z are transitive if a positive association measure between the variable X and the intermediate variable Y and further a positive association measure between Y and the endpoint variable Z imply a positive association measure between X and Z. We introduce four association measures with different stringencies, and discuss conditions for the transitivity of the signs of these association measures. When the variables follow exponential family distributions, the conditions become simpler and more interpretable. Applying our results to two data sets from an observational study and a randomized experiment, we demonstrate that the results can help us to draw conclusions about the signs of the association measures between X and Z based only on two separate studies about X, Y and Y, Z.