# Counterfactuals and Policy Analysis in Structural Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1302.4929 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1302.4929/

## Key facts

- Cited by 13 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 20 Feb 2013.

## Built on by (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Causes of Effects: Learning individual responses from population data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13730/) (2021)
- [On the Complexity of Counterfactual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13447/) (2022)
- [Deep Counterfactual Estimation with Categorical Background Variables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05811/) (2022)
- [Causal Mediation Analysis with Multi-dimensional and Indirectly Observed Mediators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07918/) (2023)
- [Identifying Causal Effects Under Functional Dependencies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04919/) (2024)
- [Causal Unit Selection using Tractable Arithmetic Circuits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06681/) (2024)
- [Towards IID representation learning and its application on biomedical data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00332/) (2022)
- [An Algorithm and Complexity Results for Causal Unit Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14412/) (2023)
- [On Transportability for Structural Causal Bandits](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17953/) (2025)
- [Bounding Probabilities of Causation with Partial Causal Diagrams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14503/) (2026)
- [Causality in the Can: Diet Coke's Impact on Fatness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10746/) (2024)
- [Teleporter Theory: A General and Simple Approach for Modeling Cross-World Counterfactual Causality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.11501/) (2024)
- [See or Guess: Counterfactually Regularized Image Captioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.16809/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Evaluation of counterfactual queries (e.g., "If A were true, would C have been true?") is important to fault diagnosis, planning, determination of liability, and policy analysis. We present a method of revaluating counterfactuals when the underlying causal model is represented by structural models - a nonlinear generalization of the simultaneous equations models commonly used in econometrics and social sciences. This new method provides a coherent means for evaluating policies involving the control of variables which, prior to enacting the policy were influenced by other variables in the system.