Causal Inference with Unmeasured Confounding from Nonignorable Missing Outcomes

Abstract: Observational studies are the primary source of data for causal inference, but it is challenging when existing unmeasured confounding. Missing data problems are also common in observational studies. How to obtain the causal effects from the nonignorable missing data with unmeasured confounding is a challenge. In this paper, we consider that how to obtain complier average causal effect with unmeasured confounding from the nonignorable missing outcomes. We propose an auxiliary variable which plays two roles simultaneously, the one is the shadow variable for identification and the other is the instrumental variable for inference. We also illustrate some difference between some missing outcomes mechanisms in the previous work and the shadow variable assumption. We give a causal diagram to illustrate this description. Under such a setting, we present a general condition for nonparametric identification of the full data law from the nonignorable missing outcomes with this auxiliary variable. For inference, firstly, we recover the mean value of the outcome based on the generalized method of moments. Secondly, we propose an estimator to adjust for the unmeasured confounding to obtain complier average causal effect. We also establish the asymptotic results of the estimated parameters. We evaluate its performance via simulations and apply it to a real-life dataset about a political analysis.