The Mixtape with Scott

This week's episode of "The Mixtape with Scott" features a conversation with Sarah Miller, a health economist at the University of Michigan. Sarah has made significant contributions to the field of economics, particularly in understanding gender dynamics and reproductive health. Her research has been influential in shaping public policy, and her groundbreaking study on the effect of Medicaid on mortality, conducted with Laura Wherry and Norman Johnson and published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, stands out as a seminal work. In this episode, we delve into her academic journey, the personal experiences that have shaped her interests, and the impactful research that drives her career.Beyond her impressive scholarly achievements, we explore the passion and curiosity that fuel her work, as well as her vision for future research. Sarah shares reflections on her personal life, offering a glimpse into the challenges and triumphs that have defined her path. Join us as we uncover the story of a dedicated scholar whose work not only advances economic theory but also has tangible impacts on public health and gender equity. This episode was a thought-provoking exploration of Sarah Miller's remarkable career and the innovative research that continues to inspire 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

This week's episode of "The Mixtape with Scott" features an insightful conversation with E. Glen Weyl, a distinguished economist whose career has spanned academia and industry. Glen earned his PhD from Princeton, spent three years at the Harvard Society of Fellows, and served as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where he made significant contributions to micro theory applications to industrial organization. However, Glen’s journey took a transformative turn when he left academia to join Microsoft, where he currently leads the Plural Technology Collaboratory, focusing on technological solutions for societal cooperation.Many listeners might recognize Glen from his influential book "Radical Markets," co-authored with Eric Posner. This work introduced the innovative voting mechanism known as quadratic voting, reflecting Glen's deepening interest in democratic processes and governance. His latest book, "Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy,” (Amazon link) co-authored with Taiwan's Digital Minister Audrey Tang, serves as a manifesto for harnessing digital technology to foster social unity and diversity. The book presents bold ideas, from digitally empowered communication to transforming global trade, aiming to enrich relationships and ensure inclusivity.In addition to his writing, Glen has also ventured into film as an executive producer of the documentary "Good Enough Ancestor," which highlights Audrey Tang's work in digital democracy. That trailer can be found here; Glen was executive producer on it.Throughout our interview, Glen shares his experiences and insights from his varied projects, illustrating his renaissance man persona. From his academic roots to his pioneering efforts at Microsoft and beyond, Glen’s story is a testament to his innovative spirit and dedication to leveraging technology for societal good. This episode promises to be an engaging exploration of his remarkable career and visionary ideas.So thank you for once again for tuning into the podcast! I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did. Don’t forget to subscribe, follow, all that and tell people about it! Thank you for reading Scott's Substack. This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Scott's Mixtape Substack at causalinf.substack.com/subscribe

Matthew Jackson from Stanford University discusses the importance of networks in human existence, linking it to resource allocation in economics. The podcast explores his journey from gymnastics to economics, the evolution of network theory, and the intersection of AI and game theory in understanding decision-making processes.

Welcome to this week’s episode of the Mixtape with Scott where I get to interview Bruce Sacerdote, the Richard S. Braddock 1963 Professor in Economics at Dartmouth. Bruce is a prolific labor economist whose work spans the range of crime, education and peer effects. Some of his papers have been some of my favorite, even. His early work on crime with Ed Glaeser used to really interest me. But it was his work on peer effects that I found really fascinating. This old paper in the QJE about how friendships form I must have read almost 20 years and it still sticks in my head. I think Bruce, though, was one of the first people that I ever encountered after graduating that was very clearly part of this credibility revolution. His papers, if it used instruments, typically would use lotteries as instruments. Or if he was studying peer effects, it was lotteries. Well, not surprisingly, Bruce was there at Harvard as a PhD student in the first class that Imbens co-taught with Don Rubin on causal inference. His classmates in that class were Rajeev Dehejia and Sadek Wahba, authors of classic applied papers on the propensity score. In fact, Bruce’s own project for that class was also published — a paper estimating the causal effect of winning lottery prizes on labor market outcomes (published in the 2001 AER). So this was fun, and I hope you enjoy it too. Apologies I ramble for so long at the start. Not sure what got into me.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

Peter Boettke, a Distinguished University Professor at George Mason University, shares his profound insights into Austrian economics and mentorship. He recounts his transformative academic journey, the pivotal figures that inspired him, and the joys of guiding young economists. The conversation also touches on the crucial balance between creativity and structure in mentoring, using engaging metaphors to explore economic perspectives. With anecdotes from his own life, Peter illustrates the lasting impact of nostalgia and the community within academia.

This week’s guest on the Mixtape with Scott is Jesse Rothstein, the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Public Policy at UC-Berkeley and the Faculty Director of the California Policy Lab. Jesse has a long list of things to which he’s made meaningful contributions, ranging from labor economics, to discrimination, to education, to causal inference and more. He’s also one of the “students of David Card” guests that I wanted to have on the podcast, as Card was his adviser way back in the day. For those curious about the paper we are talking about towards the end (“augmented synthetic control”), it’s one of my favorites in the synthetic control literature. The link to it is here. Good luck everyone this week and thanks for tuning is as always!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

Welcome to the Mixtape with Scott! We are getting closer to the hundredth episode! This is our 91st interview if I include Adam Smith (played by ChatGPT-4), which I absolutely will be counting. And the guest is someone I have admired for a long time — Martin Gaynor, or “Marty”. Marty is the J. Barone University Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon both in the economics department and their policy school, Heinz College. But he is also special adviser to Jonathan Kanter, assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division at the federal Department of Justice, and it is not the first time that Marty has served in government as a public servant. He is also a former Director of the Bureau of Economics at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. You can read some about his new position in the Department of Justice here. Marty works on the supply side of health, you might say, as opposed to the demand side. He studies markets and concentration, hospitals, firm competition, pricing — not just our health behaviors, but also the supply of healthcare through a mixture of market and non-market processes. If you go through his vita, you can see he’s racked up a lot of awards and publications over the years. There are many things you can say about Marty, and after this interview, two came to mind — resilient and kind. It was actually almost not the case that he would become as successful as an economist as he became, as he will share in this interview. He struggled initially to get a tenure track job, and even left academia briefly as a result. He is remarkably upbeat and realistic about the good fortune that he has had, though. And as you will see in this interview, it is very clear that he is a genuinely kind and warm hearted person.Marty also is a survivor in a more literal sense. He was nearly murdered in the antisemitic terrorist attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. That is his story to tell in this interview, not mine, but I will leave it at that. All of our stories matter. No matter who is listening or reading this, their personal story matters, and I hope that this interview is interesting and that you enjoy getting to know Marty a bit better. Thank you 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

Economist Daniel Chen from Toulouse School of Economics discusses his journey from childhood to Harvard, exploring wide interests and curiosity in learning. He delves into governance, economic insights, law, economics, and social change, highlighting the intersection of economics and law. The podcast also covers historical data analysis, psychological aspects of projects, and the versatility of Otree data tool in research projects.

Welcome to the Mixtape with Scott! To set up this week’s guest, let me just share real quick a personal anecdote. When I graduated college, I got a job as a qualitative research analyst doing focus groups and in-depth interviews. I had majored in literature, so this was my first exposure to anything related to the social sciences. I loved the freedom the job gave me to collect my own data and develop my own theories about why people did the things they did. In the evenings I would read articles and books in sociology and anthropology as I felt more grounding in the social sciences could help me in doing a better job. One night I read Gary Becker’s Nobel Prize speech, “The Economic Way of Looking at Life”, at the University of Chicago’s John M. Olin working paper series. I was hooked. By the time I finished his speech, I knew I wanted to be an economist. But then I read other things too, like a quantitative paper by John Lott and David Mustard’s quantitative study on concealed carry laws and crime, and was equally mesmerized. And in that working paper series, I kept coming across references to someone named Ronald Coase and I then went elsewhere to learn about him and his prolific work. David Mustard was a Gary Becker student, and his paper on concealed carry had left an impression on me. He was an assistant professor at the University of Georgia so I applied there and one other school that used his county level crime data for studies on crime. I got into both and went with my ex-wife to visit the school and the faculty. In preparing for the trip, I read a paper by a professor at the University of Georgia named Peter Klein. The paper was entitled “New Institutional Economics” and it drew extensively on that Nobel Prize winning economist I had been learning about, Ronald Coase, another Nobel Laureate named Doug North at Washington University, and Oliver Williamson, a professor at Berkeley. The article was fascinating. It was about a field called “New Institutional Economics”, which I’d never heard of, and Klein explained it well. It was about the endogenous evolution of “institutions” to support and facilitate the organization of human interactions at a high level, most often to support commerce and trade though not just that. The ideas were deep and fascinating. I remember reading that article with a pen and highlighter, going over it and over it, hanging on every word. Not only was the topic fascinating, the author writing it was an excellent writer. There was not a wasted word in it. So when I met with the faculty, including Peter, I was sold on Georgia. But unfortunately, Peter was leaving Georgia for Mizzou and so I just barely missed being in the department with him. So that is a long winded bit of background into telling you that today’s guest is someone I’ve known now for over 20 years — Peter Klein, the W. W. Caruth Endowed Chair at Baylor University in the Entrepreneurship department. Peter is now a professor as well as the department chair at Baylor in our Entrepreneurship department. And so it is my pleasure to introduce you to him. Peter did a PhD at Berkeley and studied under Oliver Williamson, who I mentioned earlier. Williamson would go on to win the Nobel Prize for extending Coase’s theory of the firm and helping develop a more robust theory based on transaction cost economics. Peter’s work on the firm extends a lot of this work on transaction cost economics continues in that line focusing on the organization of the firm. He is the author of countless articles as well as a new book entitled Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company (with Nicolai Foss). It has been a real joy having him here since I missed him the first time around.As long time listeners know, though, I typically am doing a “mini-series” within the podcast, though, and Peter fits into one of those mini-series. Those mini-series are “the econometricians”, “causal inference and natural experiment methodology”, “Becker’s students”, “economists going to tech”, and then “public policy”. But another one I’m slowly picking at has to do with the wings of the profession that fall outside of the exclusively neoclassical tradition, one of which is Austrian economics. And Peter comes from that tradition, though he has mixed it with mainstream economics and made it into something of his own. So, with that being said, let me now turn you over to the podcast! Thanks again for tuning in!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

This week’s guest on the Mixtape with Scott is famed labor economist, Richard Blundell, the David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy at the University of College at London. Dr. Blundell’s accolades are extensive: a Fellow of the Econometric Association, Fell of the American Academy of Arts and Science, former President of SOLE, of the Royal economic Society, recipient of the 2000 Frisch Prize, the 2020 Jacob Mincer Prize in Labor Economics, and on and on. You can find more information about his background here at this short biography. But ironically, it was for a different reason that I wanted to reach out to him. I was interested in reaching out to Dr. Blundell because of some research I had been doing on the history of difference-in-differences and throughout the 1990s, I kept coming back to him. He had several things he wrote in the 1990s that left me with the distinct impression that he was attempting to educate others about the bridging of causal inference and natural experiment methodologies, so I was just curious to learn more about him. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did! 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