A minimal sufficient adjustment set is a sufficient adjustment set none of whose proper subsets is sufficient. Minimality is by set inclusion and does not imply minimum cardinality or uniqueness.
Among observed pretreatment variables, every sufficient set must contain to block
and to block
Conditioning on opens the collider on
so must also be included. The resulting minimal sufficient adjustment set is
It blocks every path from to that remains after removing , while the open path
preserves instrument relevance. Adding blocks no required relevance path, so
is also sufficient.
There are no others. In particular, adding blocks the displayed relevance path. Without , conditioning on also opens
which violates independence; adding closes that path but leaves no open path from to . Hence the complete list is and .
Let be a Markov blanket of the treatment inside , and write the remaining adjustment variables as . By definition,
The sufficiency of gives
Apply the contraction axiom for conditional independence with first variable , second variable , third variable , and conditioning variable . It gives
The decomposition axiom for conditional independence then yields . Hence every Markov blanket of in is itself a sufficient adjustment set.