Sharp bounds and semiparametric inference in $L^\infty$- and $L^2$-sensitivity analysis for observational studies

Sensitivity analysis for the unconfoundedness assumption is a crucial component of observational studies. The marginal sensitivity model has become increasingly popular for this purpose due to its interpretability and mathematical properties. As the basis of $L^\infty$-sensitivity analysis, it assumes the logit difference between the observed and full data propensity scores is uniformly bounded. In this article, we introduce a new $L^2$-sensitivity analysis framework which is flexible, sharp and efficient. We allow the strength of unmeasured confounding to vary across units and only require it to be bounded marginally for partial identification. We derive analytical solutions to the optimization problems under our $L^2$-models, which can be used to obtain sharp bounds for the average treatment effect (ATE). We derive efficient influence functions and use them to develop efficient one-step estimators in both analyses. We show that multiplier bootstrap can be applied to construct simultaneous confidence bands for our ATE bounds. In a real-data study, we demonstrate that $L^2$-analysis relaxes the interpretation of $L^\infty$-analysis and provides a much more reliable calibration process using observed covariates. Finally, we provide an extension of our theoretical results to the conditional average treatment effect (CATE).