Simulation-Ready Causal Data Generating Processes

Construct, simulate, and evaluate causal data generating processes (DGPs) with known ground truth. Designed for benchmarking causal estimators, studying confounding and treatment-effect heterogeneity, and building reproducible teaching examples. Covariate roles (confounder, effect modifier, noise) and heterogeneous treatment effects are first-class concepts in the API, and estimator performance is summarised with bias, root mean squared error, confidence-interval coverage, and power.

causalsim

An R package for defining causal data generating processes with known ground truth and evaluating estimator performance against them.

Features

• Structural causal model with explicit effect, propensity, and baseline functions
• Named covariate roles: confounder, effect modifier, noise
• Preset confounding levels ("low", "moderate", "high") or custom functions
• Exact or Monte Carlo true ATE computed at construction time
• Flexible estimator interface: named numeric vector, named list, or one-row data frame
• Tidy performance metrics: bias, RMSE, coverage, and power with Monte Carlo standard errors
• Grid evaluation over the Cartesian product of any DGP parameters
• Reproducible via seed control at every stage

Installation

Requires R 4.0 or higher. Install from GitHub:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("chaycereed/causalsim")

Usage

Quick start

causalsim() generates a dataset in one call. The returned data frame includes covariate columns, treatment A, outcome Y, individual effect .tau, and true propensity .p.

library(causalsim)

data <- causalsim(n = 500, n_confounders = 1, effect = 2, seed = 1L)
head(data)

For estimator benchmarking or multi-draw workflows, use causalsim_dgp() and causalsim_draw() directly (see below).

Define a data generating process

causalsim_dgp() specifies the structural model. Parameters can be scalars, preset strings, or functions of the covariate names.

dgp <- causalsim_dgp(
  n = 500,
  n_confounders = 1,
  effect = 2,
  propensity = "moderate",
  baseline = "moderate"
)
dgp

Draw a dataset

causalsim_draw() simulates one dataset from the DGP. The returned data frame includes covariate columns, treatment A, outcome Y, individual effect .tau, and propensity .p.

dat <- causalsim_draw(dgp, seed = 1L)
head(dat)

Evaluate an estimator

An estimator is any function that accepts a data frame and returns a named numeric vector with at minimum an estimate field. ci_lower and ci_upper enable coverage and power metrics.

ols_est <- function(data) {
  fit <- lm(Y ~ A + W, data = data)
  est <- coef(fit)[["A"]]
  se <- sqrt(vcov(fit)["A", "A"])
  c(estimate = est, ci_lower = est - 1.96 * se, ci_upper = est + 1.96 * se)
}

result <- causalsim_eval(dgp, ols_est, reps = 200L, seed = 1L)
result

summary(result)
plot(result)

Evaluate across a parameter grid

causalsim_eval_grid() runs the evaluator over the Cartesian product of any DGP parameters, returning a tidy data frame of metrics for each cell.

grid_result <- causalsim_eval_grid(
  dgp = dgp,
  estimator = ols_est,
  vary = list(n = c(100L, 250L, 500L, 1000L)),
  reps = 200L,
  metrics = c("bias", "rmse"),
  seed = 1L
)
grid_result

Heterogeneous effects

Declare a covariate with role = "effect_modifier" and reference it in a function passed to effect to make the treatment effect vary across subgroups. The individual effects are stored in the .tau column as ground truth.

het_dgp <- causalsim_dgp(
  n = 2000,
  covariates = list(
    W = causalsim_covar("normal", role = "confounder"),
    V = causalsim_covar("binary", role = "effect_modifier", prob = 0.5)
  ),
  effect     = function(V) 2 + 3 * V   # effect is 2 when V = 0, 5 when V = 1
)

d <- causalsim_draw(het_dgp, seed = 1L)
tapply(d$.tau, d$V, mean)              # 2 for V = 0, 5 for V = 1

The function passed to effect is what activates the modifier; a covariate labelled effect_modifier that effect never references is inert, and causalsim_dgp() warns when that happens.

Roadmap

Planned for a future release:

• Additional covariate roles. The current roles (confounder, effect_modifier, noise) cover the common cases. Two single-path roles would complete the treatment/outcome taxonomy:

  • instrument — drives treatment only (enters the propensity model, excluded from the outcome), for benchmarking instrumental-variable estimators.
  • prognostic — drives the outcome only (enters the baseline, independent of treatment), for studying precision covariates and variance reduction.

  These will ship together with worked examples that demonstrate each (an IV estimator and a variance-reduction comparison, respectively).

• Assumption-violation helpers. First-class support for unmeasured confounding and positivity violations.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.