A Brief Introduction to Causal Inference

Abstract

Causal inference has been of interest in economics for many decades with a great deal of notable work like the Granger’s causality which directly lead to a Nobel Prize in Economics. The question of cause and effect is of paramount importance in making high-stake decisions such as economic policies. Besides, in the last ten years, causal inference in artificial intelligence has gradually become a mainstream with remarkable work such as the do-calculus by Judea Pearl. In this paper, we would like to discuss some fundamental ideas in causal inference.