The Mixtape with Scott

N. Greg Mankiw, a renowned economist and author of influential textbooks, discusses his journey from high school to Harvard. He reflects on personal anecdotes from his summers in Nantucket and childhood chess rivalries that shaped his academic path. Mankiw delves into the challenges of writing a landmark economics textbook and the evolving landscape of digital education enhanced by AI. He emphasizes the importance of mentorship in academia and shares insights into research productivity, highlighting how creativity and collaboration lead to success.

Welcome the Mixtape with Scott! This is a podcast with a simple objective: listen to the personal stories of living economists who are the primary guests I have on the show. The secondary goal is to follow a thread of people around topics I care about and allow a patchwork story of the profession to form based on, from and through those personal narratives. This is the 105th episode of the podcast, and the first episode of season four. Wow! Time flies. Today’s guest is name known to most — Dr. Janet Currie. Dr Currie attended Princeton for her PhD, graduating in 1988, spent a large chunk of her career at UCLA, before coming back to Princeton where she is now the Henry Putnam Professor in both the economics dept and the policy school. She’s had an illustrious and impactful career, which is still going, managing a deep portfolio of scientific contributions that I struggle to synthesize it easily. But broadly speaking, her work has focused a lot children, health, mental health, substance abuse and public policy. The work has so many connections over time but also across studies that it was surprising to be honest as we spoke how so much of her work went together, even when it seemed like it wasn’t obvious that it would — even her early work on collective bargaining and teachers unions leads to children, both through schools but also the household bargaining models of the early 80s. Her work on the mental health of children leads naturally into her later work on opiates when you consider the links connect through supply side treatment of attention deficit disorder and supply side prescriptions of opiates. All I could see as we spoke was this giant knowledge graph, like a spider web, connecting papers and topics to one another even when the topics themselves would shift. It was a real joy to have a chance to hear this career in her own words.One of the themes of the podcast has been the credibility revolution, which is a paradigm regarding empirical work that emerged in the 1970s at Princeton University. It is largely associated with the Industrial Relations Section, Orley Ashenfelter, and his many students and the students of his students. And Janet was an Orley student, as well as the student of one of Orley’s students, the 2021 Nobel Laureate David Card. Having her on here, and the openness with which she shared her story with me, allowed me to learn more about the program at the time she was there, for which I am grateful on top of being grateful for hearing her story.Thank you for your support and I hope this interview is one you enjoy. It’s 90 minutes but it’s a high mean low variance 90 minutes in my opinion!Scott's Mixtape 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

Welcome to this week’s episode of the Mixtape with Scott, a podcast devoted to listening to the personal stories of living economists and creating an oral history of the profession. This episode is partly inspired by my visit to San Sebastián, Spain, with my daughter right now and partly inspired by a 2003 article co-authored with Alberto Abadie studying the effect of terrorism on economic growth that introduced the synthetic control estimator. My guest is Javier Gardeazabal, a professor at the University of the Basque Country. Javier Gardeazabal is a professor at the University of the Basque Country whose body of work has covered topics in macroeconomics, time series econometrics, labor economics, cultural economics, and political economy. He did his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in May 1991, an experience that he will share about in the interview. He is from the Basque Country and returned to the Basque Country after graduation where he has been ever since. It is therefore inspiring to me that his home became the topic of a paper that he is perhaps most widely known for — a seminal contribution to both causal inference and measuring the economic costs of terrorism, coauthored with Alberto Abadie, in the 2003 American Economic Review paper, “The Economic Cost of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country.” This groundbreaking study made a major contribution to causal inference by introducing the synthetic control estimator, but also assessing the economic impact of terrorism on economic growth in the Basque Country. It was a major contribution to the field possessing all the elements of great articles in economics — an important question answered extraordinarily well with clarity and rigor. This influential paper not only cast a massive shadow over the evolution of causal inference and econometrics; it also accelerated Javier’s own research to include not only macroeconomics, but also the economics of terrorism and conflict. His career is evidence of an economist who followed his curiosity and intellectual interests to include understanding the economic costs of terrorism, introducing methods for measuring the aggregate cost of conflict, and the impact of political violence on economic well-being, but also exchange rate dynamics, time series econometrics, cultural policies, optimal test scoring methods, gender wage discrimination and more. Javier’s versatility is evident in his ability to adapt to and excel in a variety of economic topics and methodologies, continually evolving to address new and relevant economic issues.Thank you again everyone for supporting the podcast and the substack. I hope that this interview speaks to you wherever you are, whenever you are. 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

Avinash K. Dixit, a renowned economist and professor emeritus at Princeton University, shares insights from his impressive journey from Mumbai to academic success. He reflects on his transition from mathematics to economics and the emergence of game theory. The discussion highlights innovative solutions to combat corruption in developing nations and emphasizes the importance of collaboration in research. Dixit also shares memorable travel experiences and his thoughts on decision-making in uncertain environments, including the complexities of the American legal system.

David Autor, a renowned labor economist from MIT, discusses the economic impacts of globalization and technological advancements, including the effects of Chinese trade on U.S. labor markets. He shares childhood memories and interests, from his geeky personality and fascination with electronics to his love for nonfiction reading and sailing. The podcast explores his journey into labor economics, detailing his unexpected path and growth in the field, emphasizing hard work, humility, and mentorship in academia.

Joining the podcast is Adriana Lleras-Muney, UCLA Professor in health economics. She discusses the impact of compulsory schooling laws on wages and birth quarter research, the evolution of data collection, and analyzing the effects of schooling on mortality rates using instrumental variables. The conversation also delves into the New Deal Youth Employment Program and its long-term impacts on lifetime earnings and lifespan.

We have officially passed 100 episodes with today’s guest, and it’s wonderful to get to do it with my good friend, Manisha Shah. Manisha is the Chancelor’s Professor of Public Policy at University of California Berkeley. Manisha is an applied microeconomist who has historically specialized in topics related to health, education, gender and labor, with a particular focus on low and middle income countries. She has research appointments at NBER, BREAD, J-PAL, IZA and is also an editor at Journal of Health Economics as well as an associate editor at Review of Economics and Statistics. And if I can for just a moment tell you a little about that work, please bear with me.First the main area of her work that I am familiar with is the part that overlaps with my own historical research agenda in sex markets. That is because Manisha is arguably the leading expert on the economics of sex markets and has been for many years. She has published on just that topic alone in many high impactful studies like the effect of both legalizing sex work (Review of Economic Studies with me) and the effect of criminalizing it (Quarterly Journal of Economics with Lisa Cameron and Jennifer Seager), the identification of compensating wage differentials for unprotected sex (Journal of Political Economy with Paul Gentler and Stefano Bertozzi) as well as a Journal of Human Resources with Raj Arunachalam on a related topic, and more. But that is just her work on sex markets. There are also her many papers related to children development, like her Journal of Political Economy examining investments in human capital and child labor supply, her work on left-handedness and child development in Demography, another paper of hers looking at parents’ investments in children by their underlying ability, her AEJ: Applied looking at the impact of children’s development on their mother’s own labor supply, her work on sanitation and child development, and it goes on and on. There is also her work looking at people’s own risk preferences and how it relates to natural disasters they have experienced. One last thing and I’ll quit listing. But one of the things I admire about Manisha’s research is the shoe leather involved. Her usually involves primary data collection, running randomized field experiments, working directly with stakeholders, in places like Uganda, Mexico, India, Tanzania and more. It’s such a nice treat, then, to get to interview her for the 100th episode, not just because I get to share her personal story to those who only know her by reputation, but also because I count her as one of my closest friends inside and outside the profession. We worked together on a study about the legalization of sex work in Rhode Island that took around ten years from start to completion to publication. It was during a difficult time for me personally and working on that project with her meant a lot to me everyday, but more than that, working with her meant a lot to me everyday. She says in the interview that me and her similar in that we are both intense and very into our projects, and that’s true. But I guess I never really noticed that about her — all I have ever seen with Manisha is someone who is unbelievably kind, unbelievably fun and funny, unbelievably down to earth, non-judgmental, approachable, disarming, insightful, and hard working. All I can is that she has never once made me feel anything other than better about myself. Being around her, being friends with her, I mean, always leaves me feeling better than I think I would feel without her, and for that I am beyond grateful for her presence in the world. Forget the profession — in the world. So with that let me introduce you to her. 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

My producer is on vacation this week, and so I am unable to post my latest episode, so I thought I’d post an oldie but a goodie — my season 2 opening interview with Jeff Wooldridge, a much beloved econometrician and economist at Michigan State. So enjoy! Apologies and I’ll see you all next week with a new guest! Thanks again for all your support. Ciao!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

Greetings listeners! It is a pleasure to introduce this week’s guest on the podcast, Ashesh Rambachan, an assistant professor of economics at MIT. I wanted to talk to Ashesh for two main reasons. First, because I wanted to, and second, because I was aware of some of his recent work in econometrics. His recent article on evaluating the fragility of parallel trends in difference-in-differences just came out in the Review of Economic Studies. I’m also intrigued by his work with Sendhil Mullainathan on machine learning, algorithmic fairness as well as generative AI. Having a specialist in both causal inference, artificial intelligence and machine learning is rare, so I thought sitting down with him to learn more about his story would be a lot of fun, not just for me, but for others too. With that said, here you go! I hope you enjoy the interview! Thank you again for all your support!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

Esteemed labor economist Henry Farber discusses his traditional approach to labor economics, focusing on labor unions and NYC taxi driver behavior. He shares insights on the decline of unions, explores his academic journey from engineering to economics, and reflects on the impact of a dedicated student's research on welfare benefits.