S4E20: Philip Oreopoulos, Labor Economist, University of Toronto

I’m thrilled to announce that our next guest on The Mixtape with Scott is Professor Philip Oreopoulos—one of the most impactful economists working today in education and labor. A PhD student advisee of David Card, Phil is part of the distinguished lineage that helped shape the credibility revolution in applied microeconomics.

Now a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, Phil has spent his career studying how education policies and interventions affect outcomes for students and workers. His work blends rigorous causal inference with real-world relevance to uncover how both the very large interventions we employ to help society, as well as the seemingly surgically narrow ones, shape the lives of workers and students.

He’s also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a Research Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. His CV is full of important papers, but it’s the heart behind the work that really stands out—his curiosity about the world and his desire to make a difference.

In this episode, we go beyond the papers. We talk about his journey, what it was like working with David Card, and how he found his calling. It’s a thoughtful, warm conversation with a scholar who represents the very best of what economics can be.

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