A Matching Based Theoretical Framework for Estimating Probability of Causation

08/13/2018

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by   Tapajit Dey, et al.

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The concept of Probability of Causation (PC) is critically important in legal contexts and can help in many other domains. While it has been around since 1986, current operationalizations can obtain only the minimum and maximum values of PC, and do not apply for purely observational data. We present a theoretical framework to estimate the distribution of PC from experimental and from purely observational data. We illustrate additional problems of the existing operationalizations and show how our method can be used to address them. We also provide two illustrative examples of how our method is used and how factors like sample size or rarity of events can influence the distribution of PC. We hope this will make the concept of PC more widely usable in practice.