The Mixtape with Scott

Ronny Kohavi, PhD“Economists in tech” is a podcast series of mine trying to tell the story of the movement predominantly Economics PhD talent into and throughout the emerging tech sector. Previously interviews have been with Michael Schwarz (Microsoft), Susan Athey (Stanford, now DOJ, formerly Microsoft), and John List (Chicago, Wal-mart). But this week I chose to share an interview I did a month ago with a prominent computer scientist named Ronny Kohavi. Economists may not know about Ronny. Ronny did his PhD at Stanford in 1995, and was at ground zero to watch major advances happen in tech. His early work was in machine learning, and many of his most cited papers remain in that area too. But something that he has also been instrumentally involved in is from day one in tech being an aggressive evangelist, promoter and guide for the adoption and design of randomized controlled trials now used extensively within tech (called there A/B test not RCT). His recent book with Tang and Hu, "Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments” discusses in detail his thoughts on this topic.In a lot of ways, Ronny could just as easily fit in the “causal inference” series, but I chose to pin him in this because I think he is more broadly familiar to the tech sector for pushing for the randomized experimental design, and I thought that might be interesting for those of us who stand outside with curiosity tech. If you want to study with Ronny, he teaches a regular workshop at Sphere on RCTs. Scott's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

Anna Stansbury is a professor at MIT's Work and Organization Studies department. I interviewed her as part of my "economics and public policy" mixtape series. We discussed her growing up in England, and what drew her to economics, as well as her thoughts about labor market trends and other stylized facts and what she thinks they mean. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did! Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

Robert Michael, professor emeritus at University of Chicago, was a student of Nobel laureate Gary Becker from a productive period when Becker was at Columbia up through the late 1960s and in this interview shares a bit of why that time was so special. As you may recall, I have been doing my only little “mixtape” about Becker’s students and previously interviewed Bob’s old classmate and longtime friend, Mike Grossman. Bob describes a lot about the secret sauce that made Columbia such a special time for people like him, Mike, Bill and Elizabeth Landes, Isaac Ehrlich and many others. It wasn’t merely the chance to be mentored by Becker according to Bob; it was also Jacob Mincer and how complementary those two were — yin and yang, theory and empirical rigor. Bob would go on to helping shape the profession, not merely through his wonderful scholarship, but also through his overseeing of numerous important panel and cross-sectional datasets. The two with which I am most familiar are the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, which I wrote my dissertation on, and the National Health and Social Life Survey, a 1992 survey which was the first representative survey of adult American sexual behavior. He co-authored two books about sex in fact — one entitled The Social Organization of Sexuality and Sex in America. Both of these books document the sexual practices of adult Americans from that early 1992 period, riding on the crest of the AIDS epidemic and helping us better understand the basic facts about sex in America. I think you will be deeply moved, though, listening to Bob describe the lengths to which they at NORC went to talk to respondents and learn about their sexual behavior was stunning and not surprising. He notes that some respondents wept during the survey because, as they said, they had literally never talked to anyone about some of these important parts of their lives, some not even their own spouses, therapists or doctors. And yet Bob had with his team at NORC created such a safe, compassionate and respectful environment that not only could he ask intimate questions to strangers, but in fact have a nearly 90% response rate of people willing to share. A true model of science — curious, careful and compassionate. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, I introduce listeners to Michael Grossman, an early pioneer in the field of health economics. His dissertation work under at Columbia University on "health capital and demand" became a cornerstone of the modern field of health economics. We discuss his time growing up in New York, his time with Gary Becker at Columbia as his student, how he got into health in the first place, and much more. Mike is a much beloved economist and I hope you will enjoy this interview as much I did. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this week's episode of Mixtape the Podcast, I interview Mark Anderson, a health economist at Montana State University. We discuss his time growing up in Montana, his brief stint at Stanford playing football, how he got into economics, cannabis reform, public health at the turn of the 20th century, and the joys of hand collecting data. We also discuss a new course he is teaching for young faculty and students on doing applied research. Enjoy! Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this week's episode of the Mixtape podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Katy Graddy. Dr. Graddy is a professor of economics and dean of the international business school at Brandeis. She also did her PhD in economics at Princeton in the mid-1990s where as I see it design-based causal inference has its start and is gaining influence. We discussed the joys of collecting data and using it with economic theory to study markets. We discussed fish, art and bereavement, and some of the ways in which creativity manifests as an economist. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this week's episode of Mixtape: the Podcast, I have the pleasure of interviewing one of my truly favorite people I've met and learned from, Alvin Roth. Alvin Roth is the 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and professor of economics at Stanford University. He is a widely regarded and extremely innovative game theorist who uses game theory not only to understand the world but to improve it. Those improvements broadly are grouped under a field we now call "market design", but it has included helping design kidney exchange policies that can help address kidney shortages, helping redesign the allocation of physicians to hospitals and residencies, and much more. A humble man who is as I say in the interview kinder than he is smart, which given he won the Nobel Prize says a lot about both. Always a joy to talk with this man. I hope you feel so too. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this interview, I had the opportunity to talk with a wonderful man, Alan Manning. Dr. Manning is a professor of economics at London School of Economics. He is a labor economist's labor economist. He has beat the steady drum of careful empirical work thinking hard about the welfare of workers and to evaluate the presence that market composition has on their overall well being. We discussed a new paper of his in the Journal of Human Resources trying to explain the source of a wage premium in Germany for workers in urban areas, and whether and to what degree that premium is due to local competition of firms. We talked about his whole career and I hope you enjoy it. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this interview, I talk with the esteemed economist, Susan Athey, a professor of economics at Stanford University and a recently elected President of the American Economics Association. She was one of a handful of micro theorist pioneers, like Hal Varian to Google and Preston McAfee to Yahoo, who in the early 2000s traveled from academia to work for large technology firms to work on market design elements, such as the design of auctions, that would enhance the productivity of the firms themselves. Dr. Athey did this first as a consultant at Microsoft, then as its first chief economist, then later on the board of more than a half dozen firms. She has since returned to her alma mater, Stanford University, where among her many activities she established a lab on social impact, and has written countless influential articles drawing on the strengths of machine learning methods and approaches at the service of causal inference. Just as Dixit predicted that she would win the John Bates Clark award, I’ll state the obvious that it will not be the last major Prize she wins. I hope you enjoy! Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

In this week’s podcast, I had a great time talking with Gary King, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, the Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science and founder of several firms specializing in data analytics and education. As a scientist, he has made major contributions to the fields of statistics and political science, but more than that, he is also just one of the most creative, curious and passionate thinkers I’ve had the chance to meet. There is too much to summarize so let me just say I think, like I found him, you will likely be inspired as he shares his thoughts about science, the social order, inference and data. This is Mixtape: the Podcast and I am your host, Scott Cunningham! Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe