The Impact of Scientific Experiments on Health Insurance

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Economists are typically unconvinced by scientific so-called scientific experiments using first rate research design. I think that the people who work on health insurance in the scholarly community have been enormously influenced by those findings. When it comes to making policy, there are people who skip over the advocates and they do look at what the academics say.

Joshua Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the craft of econometrics--how to use economic thinking and statistical methods to make sense of data and uncover causation. Angrist argues that improvements in research design along with various econometric techniques have improved the credibility of measurement in a complex world. Roberts pushes back and the conversation concludes with a discussion of how to assess the reliability of findings in controversial public policy areas.