Direct and Indirect Effects of Sequential Treatments

Abstract

In this paper we review the notion of direct causal effect as introduced by Pearl (2001). We show how it can be formulated without counterfactuals, using intervention indicators instead. This allows to consider the natural direct effect as a special case of sequential treatments discussed by Dawid and Didelez (2005) which immediately yields conditions for identifiability as well as a graphical way of checking identifiability. The results are contrasted with the criteria given by Pearl (2001) and Robins (2003).