Reflections on Government Work and Academic Transition

Welcome to this week’s episode of the Mixtape with Scott. One of the new themes I’m hoping to pursue is the students of the 2021 winners of the Nobel Prize. And today’s interview is with Marianne Bitler, professor of economics at University of California Davis. Dr. Bitler was in the first cohort of Josh Angrist’s PhD advisees at MIT. She graduated in 1998 from MIT where Angrist was one of her advisors before going into a career in government. She took the long way to get into academia, moving through UC Irvine and landing at UC Davis. Her career has been marked by an interest in means tested poverty programs as well as reproductive health, but it’s also been marked by early interest in heterogenous treatment effects from a methodological perspective, making her contributions some of the earlier work that I think highlights some of the challenges we face when focusing exclusively on means. It was a pleasure talking to Marianne and I hope all of you find this as interesting to listen to as I did. Thanks again for tuning in!

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