# Fast Proxy Experiment Design for Causal Effect Identification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05330 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05330/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 30 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Using Experiments to Correct for Selection in Observational Studies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09676/) (2020)
- [Revisiting the General Identifiability Problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01081/) (2022)
- [When does the ID algorithm fail?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.03750/) (2023)
- [Causal Imitability Under Context-Specific Independence Relations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00585/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Optimal Experiments for Partial Causal Effect Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.06993/) (2026)
- [Reasoning Models Are Accurate but Unsound on Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03519/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Identifying causal effects is a key problem of interest across many disciplines. The two long-standing approaches to estimate causal effects are observational and experimental (randomized) studies. Observational studies can suffer from unmeasured confounding, which may render the causal effects unidentifiable. On the other hand, direct experiments on the target variable may be too costly or even infeasible to conduct. A middle ground between these two approaches is to estimate the causal effect of interest through proxy experiments, which are conducted on variables with a lower cost to intervene on compared to the main target. Akbari et al. [2022] studied this setting and demonstrated that the problem of designing the optimal (minimum-cost) experiment for causal effect identification is NP-complete and provided a naive algorithm that may require solving exponentially many NP-hard problems as a sub-routine in the worst case. In this work, we provide a few reformulations of the problem that allow for designing significantly more efficient algorithms to solve it as witnessed by our extensive simulations. Additionally, we study the closely-related problem of designing experiments that enable us to identify a given effect through valid adjustments sets.