@inproceedings{
xie2024identification,
title={Identification and Estimation of the Bi-Directional {MR} with Some Invalid Instruments},
author={Feng Xie and Zhen Yao and Lin Xie and Yan Zeng and Zhi Geng},
booktitle={The Thirty-eighth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems},
year={2024},
url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=S2P6KPLtm8}
}
We consider the challenging problem of estimating causal effects from purely observational data in the bi-directional Mendelian randomization (MR), where some invalid instruments, as well as unmeasured confounding, usually exist. 
To address this problem, most existing methods attempt to find proper valid instrumental variables (IVs) for the target causal effect by expert knowledge or by assuming that the causal model is a one-directional MR model. 
As such, in this paper, we first theoretically investigate the identification of the bi-directional MR from observational data. In particular, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which valid IV sets are correctly identified such that the bi-directional MR model is identifiable, including the causal directions of a pair of phenotypes (i.e., the treatment and outcome).
Moreover, based on the identification theory, we develop a cluster fusion-like method to discover valid IV sets and estimate the causal effects of interest.
We theoretically demonstrate the correctness of the proposed algorithm.
Experimental results show the effectiveness of our method for estimating causal effects in both one-directional and bi-directional MR models.
Identification and Estimation of the Bi-Directional MR with Some Invalid Instruments
Feng Xie Zhen Yao Lin Xie Yan Zeng Zhi Geng