@inproceedings{zhang-etal-2026-evidence,
title = "Evidence-Grounded Auditing of Identification Assumptions in Climate-Policy Causal Evaluations",
author = "Zhang, Yonghong and
Xie, Yong and
Parra, Isabel M. and
Correia, Ricardo",
editor = "Schimanski, Tobias and
Usmanova, Aida and
Morio, Gaku and
Ni, Jingwei and
Dutia, Kalyan and
Vaghefi, Seyed Saeid and
Stammbach, Dominik and
Leippold, Markus",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Natural Language Processing Meets Climate Change ({C}limate{NLP} 2026)",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.climatenlp-1.15/",
pages = "199--219",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-465-1",
abstract = "Difference-in-differences (DID) studies are widely used to evaluate climate policy, but assessing the evidence supporting their identification assumptions remains challenging. We introduce ARGUS, a structured language-model pipeline that audits reported evidence against an eleven-dimension assumption{--}implication{--}evidence rubric and abstains when relevant evidence cannot be retrieved. We evaluate ARGUS using injected flaws, economics papers, and a small pilot with reconciled labels. On the 11-flaw benchmark, ARGUS detects 73{\%} of planted flaws, compared with 18{\%} for a keyword-based pipeline. Across 26 economics papers, ARGUS abstains on about 40{\%} of paper{--}dimension assessments for lack of retrievable evidence. In a five-paper pilot with labels reconciled by two annotators, it assigns a higher risk level than the labels on 25 of the 33 assessments it completes. A rule fixed before the labels arrived removes most of this in-sample; weighted agreement stays low. ARGUS provides evidence-linked risk reports that localize potential weaknesses for expert review, without adjudicating causal claims. Code and data: https://github.com/yonghongzhang-io/ARGUS"
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<abstract>Difference-in-differences (DID) studies are widely used to evaluate climate policy, but assessing the evidence supporting their identification assumptions remains challenging. We introduce ARGUS, a structured language-model pipeline that audits reported evidence against an eleven-dimension assumption–implication–evidence rubric and abstains when relevant evidence cannot be retrieved. We evaluate ARGUS using injected flaws, economics papers, and a small pilot with reconciled labels. On the 11-flaw benchmark, ARGUS detects 73% of planted flaws, compared with 18% for a keyword-based pipeline. Across 26 economics papers, ARGUS abstains on about 40% of paper–dimension assessments for lack of retrievable evidence. In a five-paper pilot with labels reconciled by two annotators, it assigns a higher risk level than the labels on 25 of the 33 assessments it completes. A rule fixed before the labels arrived removes most of this in-sample; weighted agreement stays low. ARGUS provides evidence-linked risk reports that localize potential weaknesses for expert review, without adjudicating causal claims. Code and data: https://github.com/yonghongzhang-io/ARGUS</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Evidence-Grounded Auditing of Identification Assumptions in Climate-Policy Causal Evaluations
%A Zhang, Yonghong
%A Xie, Yong
%A Parra, Isabel M.
%A Correia, Ricardo
%Y Schimanski, Tobias
%Y Usmanova, Aida
%Y Morio, Gaku
%Y Ni, Jingwei
%Y Dutia, Kalyan
%Y Vaghefi, Seyed Saeid
%Y Stammbach, Dominik
%Y Leippold, Markus
%S Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Natural Language Processing Meets Climate Change (ClimateNLP 2026)
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-465-1
%F zhang-etal-2026-evidence
%X Difference-in-differences (DID) studies are widely used to evaluate climate policy, but assessing the evidence supporting their identification assumptions remains challenging. We introduce ARGUS, a structured language-model pipeline that audits reported evidence against an eleven-dimension assumption–implication–evidence rubric and abstains when relevant evidence cannot be retrieved. We evaluate ARGUS using injected flaws, economics papers, and a small pilot with reconciled labels. On the 11-flaw benchmark, ARGUS detects 73% of planted flaws, compared with 18% for a keyword-based pipeline. Across 26 economics papers, ARGUS abstains on about 40% of paper–dimension assessments for lack of retrievable evidence. In a five-paper pilot with labels reconciled by two annotators, it assigns a higher risk level than the labels on 25 of the 33 assessments it completes. A rule fixed before the labels arrived removes most of this in-sample; weighted agreement stays low. ARGUS provides evidence-linked risk reports that localize potential weaknesses for expert review, without adjudicating causal claims. Code and data: https://github.com/yonghongzhang-io/ARGUS
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.climatenlp-1.15/
%P 199-219
Markdown (Informal)
[Evidence-Grounded Auditing of Identification Assumptions in Climate-Policy Causal Evaluations](https://aclanthology.org/2026.climatenlp-1.15/) (Zhang et al., ClimateNLP 2026)
ACL