CaSPECT: Discovering Causally Homogeneous Subgroups via Directed Spectral Clustering

We propose \textbf{CaSPECT}, a causal spectral clustering framework for discovering causally homogeneous subgroups from observational data.

Rather than clustering in covariate space, CaSPECT defines similarity through the topology of a learned directed acyclic graph (DAG); a bootstrap-stabilised PC algorithm recovers the causal skeleton; a novel \emph{Orientation Validation Score} (OVS) combines PC bootstrap evidence with DirectLiNGAM to orient edges robustly; directed edges are weighted by backdoor-identified average treatment effects estimated via OLS or double machine learning.

Chung's directed Laplacian provides a spectral embedding in which individuals close together share the same causal propagation pathways.

We establish almost-sure consistency of the full pipeline and validate the method through a controlled simulation study and on LaLonde CPS1, IHDP, and 401(k) datasets, where CaSPECT recovers a positive and statistically significant treatment effect within the causally comparable subpopulation and corrects for severe confounding without requiring a pre-specified propensity score model.