Unified Sharp Bounds on Probabilities of Causation

Abstract

Probabilities of causation (PoCs) have developed steadily, from the binary measures first introduced by Pearl to the non-binary setting recently studied by Shu et al. As the theory has matured, PoCs have found applications in a growing range of areas, including personalized medicine, marketing and legal attribution. Shu et al. proposed closed-form bounds for multi-valued treatments and outcomes and proved them valid, but left their sharpness in high dimensions open. We close this gap with a mathematical proof. We further show that $\PNS$, $\PSub$, $\PRep$ and $\PN$ are all special cases of a single, more general formula. Combined with their equivalence classes, this settles the question of sharp bounds for discrete PoCs from experimental and observational data: in every dimension, they are given in closed form by a single theorem.