Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2021 iii Paper 207 2 c Solution 2026-09-28
The core instrumental variable assumptions are:
- Instrument relevance: the genetic variant changes educational attainment.
- Instrumental-variable independence: it is independent of unmeasured common causes of education and myopia, after any justified ancestry adjustment.
- The exclusion restriction: it affects myopia only through education, with no horizontal pleiotropy.
For a local average effect one additionally uses instrumental-variable monotonicity. Because the valid instrument supplies variation in education independent of the confounders and has no direct route to the outcome, the instrument-outcome association can be attributed to the education changed by the instrument without measuring every confounder.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 iii Paper 207 1 1 Solution 2026-09-28
Let indicate a recent birthday event, indicate a social gathering, and denote subsequent household COVID-19 infection. The standard instrumental variable conditions are:
- Instrument relevance: changes the probability or intensity of .
- Instrumental-variable independence: conditional on chosen baseline covariates, birthday timing is independent of unmeasured causes of infection and of the relevant potential outcomes.
- The exclusion restriction: affects only through the social gathering .
- For a local average treatment effect, instrumental-variable monotonicity excludes households that would hold a gathering without a birthday event but would suppress it because of one.
The usual consistency in causal inference, well-defined exposure, and absence of relevant interference in causal inference are also needed to interpret the result causally.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2023 iii Paper 221 4 ii Solution 2026-09-28
Instrumental-variable monotonicity isIt excludes defiers who would quit without the incentive but continue smoking when offered it. The possible principal strata are then never-takers , compliers , and always-takers .
By random assignment, consistency, and exclusion,The second identity follows by checking the two possible binary exposure values. Under monotonicity, is the indicator of being a complier. Therefore the numerator iswhileTheir ratio is the complier average treatment effect, also called the local average treatment effect.