The Mixtape with Scott

A person I had always wanted to get to know Dr. Elizabeth Stuart, a professor at Johns Hopkins in their biostatistics department. I knew about her for a long time before I met her because of her expansive work on a variety of issues in the area of “matching” and unconfoundedness. She did her PhD, as it turned out, at Harvard at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s around the time when Guido Imbens was still there in the economics department, and Don Rubin in the statistics department. At Harvard she worked with people like Don Rubin, her dissertation adviser, as well as Gary King, one of her collaborators and someone else I’ve interviewed on the podcast, and so I wanted to talk to her to try and piece together more of the progression of causal inference throughout the social sciences in the late 20th and early 21st century, not just through writing, but maybe even moreso through students and faculty placements at departments around the world.But these big ideas are in many ways just the “hook”, as I have said, to build a mental map of why I select certain people for the podcast. Dr. Stuart is an important scholar in her own right. She has spent a career being driven by questions about health and selected into statistics as a way of enhancing her own ability to contribute fruitfully to large and important policy questions regarding health. After graduating from Harvard in 2004, she went to Mathematica before then moving to Johns Hopkins school of public health where she steadily moved forward through tenure to associate then full professor. She is now a professor in the department of mental health, the department of biostatistics, and the department of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins. And she is now leading up pioneering new curriculum options for students there as well as moving into a new administrative position within the university.I learned things I didn’t know, such as her brief flirtation with going to Princeton’s economics program (the economics students, though, seemed miserable so she opted against it). Since I’ve been also obsessed with trying to better understand Princeton’s economics program throughout the 1970s to 1990s, I was surprised to again realize what a small world it was that Dr. Stuart herself skipped over that like a stone over water before landing at the center of the causal inference universe itself — Harvard’s statistics department. So this was a fun interview. And I hope you enjoy learning more about Dr. Stuart’s life. If you enjoy this podcast interview, or any of the others, please share it, as well as follow, like and even consider subscribing! The substack goes to subsidizing the cost of paying “my guy” who turns the raw interviews into usable podcast and YouTube videos. 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

Interview with Jason FurmanIt has been a common story throughout the last two seasons that while not every economist entered economics with a burning desire to affect public policy, a large number had. But of those that had said that usually had in mind scholarship as the primary mechanism by which policy was affected. In this week’s episode, I am joined by an economist who has spent his career very close to the machinations of economic policy itself — Dr. Jason Furman. Jason, currently a professor in Harvard's Kennedy School, took the road less traveled from being a Harvard student who left “all bug dissertation” to work with Joe Stiglitz in the Clinton administration, came back, then went back to Washington to the Obama administration, then back to Harvard again, this time as a professor!Our conversation moved from Jason's personal journey as a kid through high school and then carving his own path within and through the economics profession. It’s the stories like Jason’s that I’m trying to learn by listening to the personal stories of living economists and the hope that over time, through the collection of hundreds of them over the next several years, create a large collage of the profession’s story. An oral history of the profession told through the personal stories of economists. And this week’s story is Jason’s. As always, if you enjoy the show, please don't forget to like, share, and follow me on your preferred platform (especially Substack!). If you haven't yet, do consider subscribing to the podcast, so you don't miss out on any of these incredible stories. Your support helps bring these narratives to life.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

Derek Neal interviewIt’s Tuesday which is usually the day of the week I release a new episode for season two of the Mixtape with Scott. These interviews consist of me interviewing an economist, though sometimes I deviate and interview other social scientists or authors. The idea of the podcast is a little out there: “to be an oral history of the economics profession, focusing selectively on topics from the last 50 years, by listening to the personal stories of the economists themselves”Topics include things like causal inference and econometrics, Princeton Industrial Relation Section in the 80s and 90s, economists in the tech sector, Gary Becker’s former students, and “public policy” more generally. Each episode is about an hour though sometimes they go longer, and one time it went on for 3 hours (I haven’t posted that one yet). We start when they were little and usually end with where they are now, pausing often to discuss some of the more memorable work they have done. This week I interviewed Derek Neal, a labor economist and professor of economics at the University of Chicago. If I had to summarize one thing that described this interview, and what I learned from Derek's life, it would be that he has been riding on a knife edge of close calls and good luck. Take for instance how fortunate he was that his economics professor at small college in Georgia where he grew up had been denied tenure at Kentucky. Arriving at this college, he took it upon himself to prepare students for grad school by teaching them not just economics, but through independent studies tons of the math that they did not have access to. And Derek was one of them. Or Bill Johnson, his adviser at Virginia, who helped him learn about the important craft of writing. Or the famous Sherwin Rosen who took Derek under his wing at Chicago the second he arrived there as an assistant professor. Derek was generous in our interview. He peeled back the curtain a little and walked me through his life through all this serendipity, the “unmerited grace”, as he calls it, to where he is now. Unmerited grace tends to create within the recipient a sense of calling to do the same for others, and the sense I get, and the rumors I hear from others, is that Derek works hard to be for others what his mentors had been for him. I was told by a former student of his just this week that Derek was an incredible adviser, “but very tough”. A description I’ve heard from others whose papers he edited when he was editor at the Journal of Political Economy, too. For people, like me, who love the stories of the old economists at the University of Chicago, hearing more about people like Sherwin Rosen (who hasn’t come up before on the show) and Gary Becker (who has) should delight you. It was also good to have a southerner whose drawl matched my own. You be the judge who carries it better — me or Derek. I hope you find this emerging mosaic of stories of our profession of the last 50 years as interesting as me. I am appreciative of all these people giving me an hour of their time and sharing their stories and the stories around them as they followed their own path. I hope you hear their story, but as corny as it sounds, our story and your story too. Hearing stories, listening to stories, and telling stories are important to me, and I’m glad I get to share these with you. So thanks for listening and tuning in. Don’t forget to like, share, follow and subscribe! 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

In this week’s interview on The Mixtape with Scott, I had the opportunity to meet with the James Orin Murfin Professor of Political Science at Princeton University, Dr. Rocío Titiunik. Within the world of applied econometric methodology, Dr. Titiunik is well known for her theoretical work on regression discontinuity design. Her work with coauthors like Sebastian Calonico, Matias Cattaneo, and Max Farrell has shaped the landscape of applied econometrics through their innovative work in econometrics as well as their construction of numerous software packages in R, Stata and now python of practical utility. But she is a dual threat quarterback who is both an important contemporary quantitative methodologist as well as an influential political scientist whose applied work explores the intersection of political institutions and causal inference. That work has been instrumental in expanding our understanding of political participation, legislative behavior, and the intricacies of elections and representation.However, there's more to Rocío than the accolades on her resume. Beneath the scholarly achievements and methodological innovations is the story of a journey that will, I think, surprise many listeners. We often look at accomplished people and just assume that all the pieces fell into place for them from the moment they stepped foot into academia. But Rocío tells a different story about her path. She talks openly about her first introduction to economics occurring, not through statistics and econometrics, but theory and literature. Her entrance into Berkeley’s celebrated ag Econ PhD program happened almost serendipitously. And even while there, she was unsure how all the different parts of her personality might form within her — or if they ever would. During our conversation, she opened up about the struggles, uncertainties, and the feeling of being lost in the vast tapestry of the economics profession. Her openness and authenticity were refreshing and the interview provided a stark reminder that even the most successful among us grapple with similar doubts and fears, just like the rest of us.This conversation offers more than just an overview of Rocio's professional accomplishments. It paints a portrait of a person who, despite her status in academia, remains grounded and relatable. Her story is one of perseverance and self-discovery that will resonate with anyone who has ever questioned their path or grappled with finding their unique fit in their chosen field.Join me in this week's episode as we journey through Rocio's life, her work, and the lessons she's gleaned along the way. As much as it is an exploration of her contributions to political methodology, it is also a celebration of the human experience in all its complexity. And if you want to learn more from Dr. Titiunik’s work, you can come to her upcoming workshop at Mixtape Sessions where for three days she will be teaching about regression discontinuity design. Please remember to like, share and subscribe!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

In this week's episode of the Mixtape with Scott, I’m taking a break from interviewing economists to post a podcast interview with a non-economist, the historian Mike Jay. Mike Jay is a historian of medicine and I interviewed him last year as part of a now somewhat defunct project on the emerging medical reforms in the US and around the world related to "psychedelic medications". I felt that as these were happening fast, it would be good for those health economists and policy advocates to learn more about it, and sometimes that means talking to the non-scientists who have written about it as well as the scientists. I found Mike because he wrote a fascinating book on the global history of mescaline published through Yale Press who also published my book. I devoured that book during Covid. I spent Covid lock down studying everything I could about contemporary but also historical psychedelic medicine which included the MAPS trials on MDMA, the studies by Roland Griffiths and his colleagues on psychedelics, and others. But I was also interested in the lost work of scientists from the 50s and 60s and the psychotherapies that grew out of it. Mike'ss book on the history of mescaline was absolutely riveting. He’s a great writer and I highly recommend him. But I also recommend him because he wasn't always a writer (who was?). He aspired to something else and more or less transitioned into it as his career evolved. I thought hearing that type of story might be interesting to others curious about their talents as a writer to hear what it was like for someone else. Mike also has a new book out you may want to check out. I haven’t read it but it’s a continuation of this work he’s been doing on the history of psychedelics. So, again, thanks for tuning it to the Mixtape with Scott. Please like, follow and share! And if you want to support this work, please go over to my substack (causalinf.substack.com) and hit subscribe! 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

Podcast interviewI’m going to drop this week’s podcast a day early because Dr. Abadie’s doing a workshop for Mixtape Sessions later this week, and thought it would be better to just give everyone a headsup about it and bundle it with this interview too. Dr. Abadie has had a major influence on me. In 2009, I began studying the legalization of indoor sex work on public health and violence against women, a paper that would land me my first Top 5 publication with Manisha Shah, and from the start I decided to use synthetic control to do it. We were one of the early adopters in fact, and I entered into a long pen pal conversation with Alberto over the years. I asked if I could do the “real podcast interview” with him, the one that’s more of the “oral history of economics; personal stories of economists” and he agreed. (He did a shorter non-themed one abt synth last year for me for a substack I was writing abt synth). So I’m super excited and honored to have a chance to interview Dr Alberto Abadie again on the podcast. And I hope you like it.Dr. Abadie is at MIT. Before MIT, he was a professor in Harvard Kennedy School where I once heard he got a standing ovation after a lecture on econometrics. The number of econometricians teaching econometrics to non-econometricians who have gotten standing ovations is a very small set is my hunch; we all are trying to nail it, but few get it. He was one of the best speakers for me when I first saw him speak at the Northwestern causal inference workshop a decade ago (which I’m co-directing again this year with Bernie Black for those interested — here for main, here for advanced). His work spans a lot of topics. He did his doctorate at MIT under Josh Angrist in the 1990s, and then moved into a collaboration with both Josh as well as Guido Imbens with whom he wrote a series of very nice papers on inexact matching. One in econometrica 2006 where they worked out the large sample properties of the method under repeated “matching with replacement”. And another where they worked out a method for using regression adjustment to reduce the bias from inexact matching in a 2011 JASA. I’ve written about both on the substack and they’re great. Over the years, I have come to love them.The inexact matching method finds matches that minimizes the sum of squared matching discrepancies across all confounders, which is a similar objective function to synth which finds weights on donor pool units (as opposed to M:1 matching). Both methods are imputation methods — using comparison groups to impute missing counterfactuals, only one of them builds on unconfoundedness (matching) and the other on a factor model (synthetic control). Both matching and synth have been very influential, but matching predates Alberto by decades going back to the Rubin and Cochrane in the 1970s and 1960s. Alberto, on the other hand, is the author of synthetic control with Gardazebeal in a 2003 American Economic Review article studying the effect of terrorism in Basque Country on economic variables, like GDP. And it has been used now many times, including my study of sex work. But he’s done more than that. He’s done work on complier analysis in instrumental variables, a topic that I am noticing becoming more common nowadays with advances made on the leniency design, as well as his new work on clustering under sampling versus design based concepts of uncertainty. He’s a great one, and I hope you like this interview. Here’s the video: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

Hello Substack readers,I'm excited to share with you the insights from my latest podcast episode, where I had the incredible opportunity to interview Yale professor and renowned economist Steven Berry. In this week's edition, we will:* Introduce you to our esteemed guest, Steven Berry* Delve into the groundbreaking BLP model* Recap the fascinating conversation we hadMeet Steven BerrySteven Berry is the David Swensen Professor of Economics at Yale University, winner of the 1996 Frisch Medal, and a leading figure in the fields of econometrics and industrial organization. With a life that started in the Midwest, Berry's journey into economics was marked by his love for science fiction and the brilliant faculty he studied with at the University of Wisconsin, such as Chuck Manski, Gary Chamberlain, Art Goldberger, John Rust, and many others.The BLP ModelOne of Berry's most significant contributions to the field of economics is the "BLP" model, developed alongside James Levinsohn and Ariel Pakes. Their 1995 Econometrica paper, "Automobile Prices in Market Equilibrium," has had a profound impact on industrial organization and real-world applications.The BLP model offers a powerful tool for understanding demand in various competitive environments, helping both private companies and public policymakers make better decisions. You can find a link to the BLP paper here.Our Conversation with Steven BerryDuring our interview, we explored Berry's life and his experiences in economics. From his early days in the Midwest to his time at Wisconsin and beyond, we delved into the stories and influences that shaped his career. Berry shared his thoughts on the development and real-world applications of the BLP model, as well as his views on the future of industrial organization and econometrics.Our conversation with Berry was a fascinating journey through his life and the evolution of economics over the past few decades. For those who are interested in the intersection of econometrics and industrial organization, or simply curious about the personal stories of an influential economist, this interview is a must-listen.Don't miss the full conversation on this week's episode of the Mixtape with Scott podcast, available on your favorite podcast platform. And as always, be sure to like, share, and subscribe to the podcast, and stay tuned for more "explainers" on econometrics in my Substack.Until next time,Scott CunninghamScott'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

Dear Mixtape with Scott listeners,We are pleased to announce the release of our latest podcast episode, featuring an insightful conversation with Jon Roth, an exceptionally talented young econometrician from Brown University. With only three years since graduating, Jon has already made significant contributions to the field of econometrics, publishing high-profile papers on difference-in-differences in esteemed outlets such as Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, and AER: Insights. Moreover, he has authored a timely literature review on differential timing and has an R&R at JPE: Micro on staggered rollout. In short, he has hit the ground running with many papers that no doubt will be finding their way into all of our papers soon, if they haven’t already.In this episode, Jon shares his journey, from growing up in Massachusetts to discovering his passion for economics. He speaks candidly about how his father's accomplishments as a theoretical physicist led him to believe that his potential might lie more in applied labor economics. However, through a series of events, Jon found himself drawn to econometrics, ultimately excelling in the field.We also discussed Jon's love of sports, his transition from solving problem sets to producing research, and his experience navigating the job market over three years, as he honed his professional identity.As a special opportunity for our listeners, Jon Roth will be teaching an exclusive workshop on the Mixtape Sessions platform on Friday, April 21st, starting at 9 am EST. Don't miss the chance to learn from one of the brightest minds in the field, as he covers much of his own work and more.Join me, your host Scott Cunningham, as we dive into the life and work of Jon Roth in this engaging episode of Mixtape with Scott. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. Youtube video below. As always, we appreciate your support for Mixtape with Scott. If you enjoy our podcast and want to get even more from our community, consider becoming a paying subscriber to our Substack. I am working hard on trying to provide exclusive value for all paying subscribers, so stay tuned. For now it’s just the warm glow you’ll get from knowing you’re contributing!If you haven't already, please take a moment to share this episode with your friends, colleagues, and anyone you think would enjoy it. Your recommendations are incredibly valuable and help us grow our audience. Remember to also like, follow, and subscribe to Mixtape with Scott on your preferred podcast platform to stay updated on our latest episodes. And leave us a review on Spotify or Apple; those always help.Thank you for being a part of our journey as we continue to explore the fascinating stories of the people shaping the world of economics. We look forward to sharing more thought-provoking conversations with you.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 is an interview with Joseph Doyle. Joe is the Erwin H. Schell Professor of Management and Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management who has had a distinguished career as a labor economist studying a range of topics that most outside of economics do not always associate with the field — like child welfare and foster care, juvenile incarceration and its effect on high school completion and adult incarceration, and more. The welfare of children, as it turns out, has been a longstanding research focus of Dr. Doyle’s, and because I’ve written on foster care myself, and because his paper with Anna Aizer study the causal effect that juvenile incarceration has on high school completion and adult incarceration is one of my favorite applied papers ever written by economists, I have constantly gravitated back to him and his work. Dr. Doyle someone I’ve always looked up to for a variety of reasons, not just topics, but also his ingenious approaches to identification of causal effects outside the purely randomized controlled trial. After all, no one would ever entertain the possibility of randomly assigning children to incarceration even if the question of what effect it has on life outcomes is of supreme importance. And so we are dependent on the work of people like Dr. Doyle who care about the topic too, but also have the skill and seriousness of mind and heart to develop plausible strategies to answer the question — not because the methods are cute, but because the question is so vital and important that it begs to be answered. I enjoyed this hour with Dr. Doyle, and hope you do too. Please remember to share, subscribe and like the episode!And apologies the video below is messed up; I got a new computer and the Zoom wasn’t working right. So unlike usually seeing us side by side, it’s one person at a time. And I am off on naming the order of episodes — this is episode 8, not 10. 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

In this week’s podcast episode, The Mixtape with Scott, I am interviewing Paul Oyer. Paul Oyer is a labor economist at Stanford University and author of several books, including "Everything I Needed to Know about Economics I learned from Online Dating", which is one of my favorite "popular general interest books explaining what economics is", as well as "An Economist Goes to the Game" which is about sports and economics. Links below for both. He's a fun, funny and interesting guy whose work in labor economics and personnel economics follows many of my own interests -- how firms hire, what they pay, discrimination, and platforms, just to name a few. I had a lot of fun interviewing Paul and hope you like it too. Thanks for your support, but I welcome even more of it by becoming a subscriber! And of course share this with you friends, family, loved ones, and especially those people you hate. Really rub it in their face with how good your taste in podcasts is.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