Identifiability and transportability in dynamic causal networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a causal analog to the purely observational dynamic Bayesian networks, which we call dynamic causal networks. We provide a sound and complete algorithm for the identification of causal effects in dynamic causal networks, namely for computing the effect of an intervention or experiment given a dynamic causal network and probability distributions of passive observations of its variables, whenever possible. We note the existence of two types of hidden confounder variables that affect in substantially different ways the identification procedures, a distinction with no analog in either dynamic Bayesian networks or standard causal graphs. We further propose a procedure for the transportability of causal effects in dynamic causal network settings, where the result of causal experiments in a source domain may be used for the identification of causal effects in a target domain.