Conformal Convolution and Monte Carlo Meta-learners for Predictive Inference of Individual Treatment Effects (2402.04906v5)

Abstract: Generating probabilistic forecasts of potential outcomes and individual treatment effects (ITE) is essential for risk-aware decision-making in domains such as healthcare, policy, marketing, and finance. We propose two novel methods: the conformal convolution T-learner (CCT) and the conformal Monte Carlo (CMC) meta-learner, that generate full predictive distributions of both potential outcomes and ITEs. Our approaches combine weighted conformal predictive systems with either analytic convolution of potential outcome distributions or Monte Carlo sampling, addressing covariate shift through propensity score weighting. In contrast to other approaches that allow the generation of potential outcome predictive distributions, our approaches are model agnostic, universal, and come with finite-sample guarantees of probabilistic calibration under knowledge of the propensity score. Regarding estimating the ITE distribution, we formally characterize how assumptions about potential outcomes' noise dependency impact distribution validity and establish universal consistency under independence noise assumptions. Experiments on synthetic and semi-synthetic datasets demonstrate that the proposed methods achieve probabilistically calibrated predictive distributions while maintaining narrow prediction intervals and having performant continuous ranked probability scores. Besides probabilistic forecasting performance, we observe significant efficiency gains for the CCT- and CMC meta-learners compared to other conformal approaches that produce prediction intervals for ITE with coverage guarantees.