Note on the identification of total effect in Cluster-DAGs with cycles

Abstract

In this note, we discuss the identifiability of a total effect in cluster-DAGs, allowing for cycles within the cluster-DAG (while still assuming the associated underlying DAG to be acyclic). This is presented into two key results: first, restricting the cluster-DAG to clusters containing at most four nodes; second, adapting the notion of d-separation. We provide a graphical criterion to address the identifiability problem.