Making, Updating, and Querying Causal Models with CausalQueries

Abstract

The R package CausalQueries can be used to make, update, and query causal models defined on binary nodes. Users provide a causal statement of the form X -> M <- Y; M <-> Y which is interpreted as a structural causal model over a collection of binary nodes. Then CausalQueries allows users to (1) identify the set of principal strata – causal types – required to characterize all possible causal relations between nodes that are consistent with the causal statement (2) determine a set of parameters needed to characterize distributions over these causal types (3) update beliefs over distributions of causal types, using a Stan model plus data, and (4) pose a wide range of causal queries of the model, using either the prior distribution, the posterior distribution, or a user-specified candidate vector of parameters.