Learning the Causal Structure of Copula Models with Latent Variables

Abstract

A common goal in psychometrics, sociology, and econometrics is to uncover causal relations among latent variables representing hypothetical constructs that cannot be measured directly, such as attitude, intelligence, and motivation. Through measurement models, these constructs are typically linked to measurable indicators, e.g., responses to questionnaire items. This paper addresses the problem of causal structure learning among such latent variables and other observed variables. We propose the 'Copula Factor PC' algorithm as a novel two-step approach. It first draws samples of the underlying correlation matrix in a Gaussian copula factor model via a Gibbs sampler on rank-based data. These are then translated into an average correlation matrix and an effective sample size, which are taken as input to the standard PC algorithm for causal discovery in the second step. We prove the consistency of our 'Copula Factor PC' algorithm, and demonstrate that it outperforms the PC-MIMBuild algorithm and a greedy step-wise approach. We illustrate our method on a real-world data set about children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.