dame-flame: A Python Package Providing Fast Interpretable Matching for Causal Inference

Abstract

dame-flame is a Python package for performing matching for observational causal inference on datasets containing discrete covariates. This package implements the dynamic almost matching exactly (DAME) and fast, large-scale almost matching exactly (FLAME) algorithms, which match treatment and control units on subsets of the covariates. The resulting matched groups are interpretable, because the matches are made directly on covariates, and high-quality, because machine learning is used to determine which covariates are important to match on instead of human inputs. The package provides several adjustable parameters to adapt the algorithms to specific applications, and can calculate treatment effects after matching. The most recent source code of the implementation is available at https://github.com/almost-matching-exactly/DAME-FLAME-Python-Package.